Coax, bribe or mandate? Companies wrestle with employee vaccinations.
The message from many companies to their office workers is clear. It will soon be time to shed the slippers for hard shoes and return to your desk. But many companies are still puzzling over a single quandary: What to do about vaccines. Should they require employees to get them? Encourage or cajole or bribe them?
“We’re all kind of, you know, flying by the seat of our pants,” said Wayne Wager, the chief executive of Remote Medical International, a consulting firm in Seattle that is helping companies that are reopening offices.
Most companies are hoping to avoid requiring vaccines, reports Lauren Hirsch of The New York Times. The federal agency that enforces workplace discrimination laws says they can, but chief executives fear vaccine mandates would lead to lawsuits, invite political upheaval and be hard to enforce. But they’re worried about safety. An outbreak could force a company to retrench on masking and social distancing policies, making it even harder to get back to normal. So they are trying everything short of a mandate, without yet ruling one out.
One blue-chip company that welcomed back many workers on Monday, Goldman Sachs, prepared for their return by sending an email last week telling employees to report their vaccination status within two days. In May, the bank had notified employees that they should “make plans to be in a position to return to the office” by June 14 in the United States and June 21 in Britain.
Nearly a third of companies have yet to develop any vaccine policy, according to a survey of 770 companies conducted by the human resources software company Tinypulse.
Some companies are effectively paying employees to share their status:
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Walmart is offering $75 to any worker who shows proof of vaccination.
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In a deal that United Airlines struck with the Air Line Pilots Association, which represents more than 59,000 pilots, airlines are paying fully vaccinated pilots a bonus equivalent to as much as 13 hours of pay.
Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/live/2021/06/14/business/economy-stock-market-news/