As many businesses across the United States struggle to deal with the employment issues arising out of the COVID-19 pandemic, SixFifty, the technology subsidiary of the law firm Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, today released a free automated tool to help them develop essential policies on working from home, sick leave, and other critical issues.

Readers may remember that I wrote about SixFifty just last week, when it launched an automated product to help companies automated GDPR compliance and documentation.

This new COVID-19 tool uses automated policies developed by Wilson Sonsini’s employment attorneys and a questionnaire system that can gather information from employees impacted by COVID-19, manage tasks and automate important communications.

The tool provides two main features:

Specialized COVID-19 policies. The tool prompts employers to answer a series of questions about their business. Based on their answers, it can generate four sets of policies:

  • COVID extended sick leave policy.
  • COVID remote work policy.
  • COVID travel policy.
  • COVID reimbursement policy.

Policies are generated as a .docx file which the business can then download and own.

Employee questionnaire. A questionnaire system helps companies take the pulse of their employees by allowing them to create a set of questions and prompts that they can deploy to their workforce via a single link.

SixFifty says it worked with Wilson Sonsini’s employment experts to configure a COVID-specific questionnaire that addresses exposure to COVID-19, travel and when employees can return to work.

Through a dashboard, companies can track each response, create workflows to address any issues that arise and automate employee communications.

“With Wilson Sonsini’s expertise in this area, we realized that SixFifty is uniquely positioned to provide automated tools that address an immediate need during this pandemic,” Kimball Parker, CEO of SixFifty, said in a statement announcing the tool. “This is exactly what SixFifty is here for—to help companies respond to situations like this by deploying affordable and scalable legal products.”

The company said that it and Wilson Sonsini attorneys will continue to monitor the COVID-19 outbreak and will update the COVID-19 tools with any necessary changes.

SixFifty will also hold a series of webinars on how to use the COVID-19 tools. The first is scheduled for Friday, March 27, at 10 a.m. PST. Companies can register for the webinars at www.sixfifty.com/covid.

Photo of Bob Ambrogi Bob Ambrogi

Bob is a lawyer, veteran legal journalist, and award-winning blogger and podcaster. In 2011, he was named to the inaugural Fastcase 50, honoring “the law’s smartest, most courageous innovators, techies, visionaries and leaders.” Earlier in his career, he was editor-in-chief of several legal publications, including The National Law Journal, and editorial director of ALM’s Litigation Services Division.