As cities and states are either adopting (or poised to adopt) shelter-in-place orders around the country, people are wondering what will happen if they get stopped by law enforcement. Will they get a stern lecture or maybe get arrested and hauled off to jail? Some news outlets are reporting that most people will be given a warning but it’s also been reported that people could be detained or possibly even given a citation. This is particularly troublesome for people who work for an Essential Business and must still show up to work each day.
Essential Businesses are typically those that provide critical services like hospitals, pharmacies, groceries and others but the definition could differ from city to city and state to state.
To help protect Essential Workers from being detained for long periods of time and avoid possible citations, a veteran-owned employment screening company called SafestHires is offering a free service to its clients called Essential Worker Verifications.
For as long as a shelter-in-place order remains active, the employee will carry a letter, printed on their company letterhead, with a message to law enforcement that they work for an Essential Business. The letter identifies the type of Essential Business the employee works for and it will feature a link to a password-protected webpage that reveals the company’s workforce roster.
A law enforcement officer can quickly login to the webpage and find the employee’s full name on the roster, which ensures instant third-party verification that the employee is not in violation of the shelter-in-place order.
“We’re always thinking up ways that we can help our clients,” said SafestHires co-founder Andy Andersen. “We did some research and couldn’t find any sort of verification services like this online so we decided to deploy our own service and make it available to our clients at no cost.”
Eric Caesar of Ellison Technologies, which is a technology services company that supports aerospace, defense, medical and other critical industries immediately adopted the service.
“As a company that supports many Essential Businesses in healthcare and defense, we can’t have our employees being detained for any length of time during a shelter-in-place order because we really need them to be at work,” said Caesar. “We were planning to issue letters to our team, but then we had to think about setting up our own phone line and assigning staff members to take calls so they could verify our employees, which would take them away from other critical tasks. This free service by SafestHires is really innovative because it takes all of this off our plate with instant online verification. This will definitely give all of us some peace of mind,” he said.
SafestHires’ clients must self-certify that they are an Essential Business or that they are allowed to support Essential Businesses. As a company’s workforce changes, with some people leaving and others joining the team, SafestHires will continuously update its clients’ rosters for accuracy.
“This whole thing has created utter chaos for companies,” said Andersen. “It’s just one small thing that we can do to help out,” he said.
About SafestHires
SafestHires is an employment background checks and drug testing company that was founded by four Gulf War veterans, including two former Navy SEALS and a former undercover drug operative for NCIS. We specialize in easy, fast, accurate and compliant background checks. Visit https://www.safesthires.com.
View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200323005509/en/