COVID-19 Weekly Digest (September 23, 2020)
Sleep is as close to a panacea as we are likely to get in our lifetimes: it helps us recover from injuries and illness, plays a vital role in memory formation, and helps keep us healthy. Disrupting our sleep has an adverse impact on nearly every system in our bodies. So perhaps it is not surprising that a recent study by the National Bureau of Economic Research found that unemployment disrupts sleep, along with other negative impacts on health and well-being. Even if you’re not unemployed, the pandemic has been stressful enough that many people are experiencing 'coronasomnia.' In this article, a Harvard Business Review editor describes her experiments with four different tactics to get better sleep. The one that worked best for her was setting aside all electronics and avoiding all screens for two hours before bedtime.
These have been unusual times that are impacting nearly everyone on the planet. We hope that you are finding ways to make this a time not just for survival but for growth as well!
TAX NOTES
The CARES Act has a lot of little things that you can take advantage of this year:
Over the counter drugs and feminine hygiene products can be paid for with your HSA.
Taxpayers who have outstanding tax debts will have liens or levies suspended, and new delinquent accounts will not be sent to collection at this time.
Distributions from retirement accounts will not incur the 10% penalty for certain taxpayers.
Taxpayers can take an above-the-line charitable deduction for up to $300 in qualified cash donations.
HDHPs can pay for COVID-19 related care without jeopardizing their status.
TAX ISSUES
With many employees working remotely, state tax issues may pop up for many small businesses. In some states, payroll expenses for an employee working for an out-of-state company can trigger income tax and sales tax issues for the company, and multi-state income tax issues for the employee. While some states have released guidance providing relief for employees who relocated due to COVID-19, not all have. States that have issued guidance include Alabama, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Mississippi, Nebraska, New Jersey, North Dakota, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, and Washington, D.C. If your business has employees working remotely in new states, contact our office so we can help you understand the possible impact.
WORKING FROM HOME
Without the structure of a commute to bookend the workday and informal breaks at the coffee maker or water cooler, working from home may mean you’re not taking as many mental breaks as you need. Consciously taking breaks during the day and prioritizing activities that help you regenerate can help you recharge, avoid burnout, and keep your sanity. For example, starting your day by stretching, reading, or savoring a cup of coffee rather than diving into your email immediately can give you “a sense of perspective that there is a world outside of your job.”
LIVING WITH AND AFTER THE PANDEMIC
Health updates
As we enter flu season, how can you tell if you have a cold or the flu or if it’s COVID-19? This article in the Wall Street Journal outlines the key differences. For example, the fever caused by COVID-19 may not rise much above 100.4 degrees, but it can make you feel much worse than a similar fever caused by the flu. Shortness of breath continued fever, and pneumonia indicates COVID-19 while nasal congestion is more likely with a cold or the flu. Wet coughs indicate a cold while dry coughs accompanied by a loss of taste or smell are signs of COVID-19.
Work in the post-pandemic world
Zoom, Slack, Google Docs, and other online tools make collaboration between far-flung colleagues easy. But too much collaboration leaves team members unfocused, stretched, and susceptible to burnout. One solution is to limit the projects that require input and collaboration from the whole team, as described in this article on Fast Company. Some projects do require input from everyone, but most can be more successfully managed by a smaller team. Assessing the need for whole-team collaboration versus small group responsibility can help teams focus on the right priorities.
With much of the workforce out of the office, many companies are using this time as an opportunity to redesign the workplace to make it an inviting place for employees to return to. Some are replacing open offices with dynamic spaces that can be easily reconfigured to suit a team’s needs. These spaces may include small offices for deep work, tables or groups of desks for teams who want to work together, and casual, café-style seating. Other companies are exploring replacing large central offices with small satellite offices closer to where their employees live.
Back to school
Now that we are settling in for what may be a long stint of remote learning, parents will need to find ways to make remote school work for their kids. Assessing the school’s plans and the school’s ability to manage those plans, alongside your own family’s situation is the first step. Besides acquiring academic skills, an important function of schools is teaching social skills, which is harder to do on Zoom. Reading to your children and discussing their schoolwork can help. Another suggestion is to form a pandemic bubble with several other families with children of the same age. This alternative is discouraged if there are any family members with compromised immune systems.
Should you go back to school?
This is a perfect time to question where you are in your career if you are not happy or you are currently out of work. Conversely, if you are a small business owner and want to pick up a new skill, now is the time to go for it. Did you know that there are many free courses available on Coursera that you can audit? If you decide to take the course for credit, it will cost you $49. If you are considering a career in technology, you do not even need any experience to enroll in Google’s technology courses set up in conjunction with Coursera, such as the Google IT Support Professional Certificate.
Bertelsmann is funding 15,000 scholarships in Data, AI, and Cloud-Computing in conjunction with Udacity, another online learning platform. This scholarship—part of a 3-year commitment by Bertelsmann to fund 50,000 scholarships—is an expansion of their partnership with Udacity and of their joint efforts to increase learning opportunities in emerging technologies to students across the globe.
The initial phase of the Bertelsmann Technology Scholarship Program is structured in two phases. First, 15,000 scholarship recipients will participate in Challenge Courses focused on either Data, AI, or Cloud that will run from December 2020 to March 2021. The top 1,600 performers from the initial phase will then receive full Nanodegree scholarships beginning on March 2021.
There are lots of professional certifications out there right now and many are offered at reduced rates. If nothing else check out the free University of Michigan course, The Science of Success, and sign up. What do you have to lose?
We sincerely hope that you and your family are well and remain well. If you have any questions or concerns, don’t hesitate to reach out to us. We are all in this together!
