Contemporary Issues in HR

Recently, you accepted a job as the head of HR with a company in Silicon Beach (Los Angeles's response to Silicon Valley). In 2021, the company only had 5 employees, it was essentially, a startup business.

Currently, the company has 24 employees in California and 27 employees who either work from home in a different state or are temporary working in other states during the COVID-19 pandemic, e.g., a half dozen or so employees are working from Oahu, Hawaii. The company pays 50 or so engineers as independent contractors. It is unknown where the engineers perform their services but all of them are remote.

With the difficulties of a growing workforce; lots of millennial employees, who value working remotely and time off; and a pretty liberal stance towards time off; the company is starting to see performance drop off across-the-board. The CEO has had enough and has tasked you with formalizing leave policies and procedures so that the company gets back to its early days of solid performance.

Already in your first week, you have a challenge in this regard: an employee whom many at the Company call Lazy Larry. Yesterday, Lazy Larry called his supervisor and Larry stated that he wanted to take the next 5 weeks off from work because he was not feeling well and believes that the workplace is not taking COVID-19 seriously anymore and is nervous to be at the main facility in Silicon Beach without COVID-19 protocols.

You do not believe that the Company had any written leave of absence policies prior to your joining the Company last week. Lazy Larry's supervisor has no idea how to respond to Larry's informal text message stating that he will not come to work for five weeks. The CEO wants to fire Larry.

Please draft a memorandum to the CEO that explains what laws govern whether the Company needs to provide Larry time off from work, pay for time off from work, etc. If there are any government benefits that Larry might qualify for, please briefly address those, though the purpose of the memorandum is to inform the CEO of the Company's options concerning Larry's request for leave. Your memorandum should address what written policies the Company should or must have in place for such requests going forward. If there are facts pertinent to your determination of whether a leave of absence is required or recommended that depends on facts that are missing in this fact pattern, then please note what additional facts are necessary to determine whether a leave of absence applies and the missing facts' importance to your analysis.