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Hello, and thank you for taking the time to share your concerns and giving us an opportunity to hopefully clear up some confusion. We are attempting to do as much as we can to protect you and your fellow on-site employees, despite the challenges that accompany being deemed an essential business/industry that must remain open during this time of crisis. We have made several adjustments to the way we operate, including reducing hours at many of our communities (but still paying employees a full 8 hour day), allowing employees who can effectively do their jobs from home to do so, encouraging contactless communication with residents, and only sending our Service teams in to apartments for "urgent" or emergency service requests. Masks and cleaning supplies are constantly being sourced, ordered and sent to our Service teams, and we are obtaining as many as we can given the nationwide shortages. As for making accommodations, on March 13 we announced that all non-union employees are now eligible to receive up to 80 hours of emergency paid time off, to be used if you or someone in your family has fallen ill, if you must remain home to provide childcare while schools are closed, or if you desire to self-quarantine and are not able to perform your particular job function from home. Today we announced that an additional 80 hours will also be awarded to each employee. Please discuss this benefit with your managers if you are not yet familiar with it (but please also note that if you are a union employee, the benefits we are able to provide to you are determined by each individual CBA; more information and communication for union employees is being developed as we speak).
Our senior leadership teams are meeting 7 days a week to discuss ongoing developments and are making an effort to communicate all announcements and policy changes quickly to our site teams, but we know that things are changing so constantly that you may not always see the latest information. Every update is posted to the COVID resource center on ERNIE, so please be sure to review that daily for the latest information, in addition to monitoring your emails. If you haven't already watched them, there are video messages from our CEO and COO posted on ERNIE as well, and you can also watch the recordings from the last two weeks of live virtual Huddles. And if you ever have questions or concerns that aren't addressed through those forums, please keep in close contact with your CM, RM, and local HR team. The safety and wellbeing of our employees is our number one priority, and we hope to show you that as we move forward from here.
