Incentivizing Employees to Get Vaccinated? Be Careful

Sure, you want to reopen your small business in the safest possible manner and then keep it open. You want your employees that are essential to your running a profitable company to be safe so your customers will also be safe and will return.

The worse thing now would be for someone to contract covid-19 in your place of business and then have health officials trace it to your establishment. Just imagine the negative publicity.

Many small businessmen and women are anxious to open because, after all, it’s their livelihood and passion. In order to create a safe environment, many company owners are offering their employees a range of incentives and encouragements to get vaccinated so that the risk of transmission is reduced. The news has been replete with such examples.

Several major employers, such as Dollar General, McDonald’s, Kroger and Olive Garden, have announced incentives for workers to get vaccinated.

With healthy employees, the business will stay open. It will also potentially limit downtime when workers contract the virus. Experts say a high proportion of the US population needs to get vaccinated to build herd immunity, which would limit the coronavirus from spreading.

But for now, according to US Today, some employers are saying that they’re merely strongly encouraging vaccination but essentially forcing workers to do it on their own time. Others are stepping up to the plate, thinking that proactively encouraging their employees to get vaccinated is better.

However, among others, Denise Rousseau, professor of organizational behavior and public policy at Carnegie Mellon University's Heinz College, observed that it doesn’t make sense for businesses to refuse to give workers a few hours of paid time off to get vaccinated. Others opined that it’s the moral thing to do.

Generally, employers can require their workers to get vaccinated as a condition of keeping their jobs, with a few notable exemptions. But legal experts and health advocates say most companies won't make covid-19 vaccinations mandatory for their employees. Instead, helpful employers will look for ways to make it easier for their workers to get shots.

For example, grocery stores, which were among the first businesses to implement covid-19 safety measures such as mask requirements, are also the early leaders when it comes to offering to compensate their hourly workers for the time it takes to get vaccinated.

At McDonald’s, which had about 205,000 employees globally as of early 2020, US workers will be given four hours of pay to get the vaccine. The policy does not cover the 93% of its restaurants that were run by franchisees as of a year ago.

Darden Restaurants, which owns Olive Garden and LongHorn Steakhouse, will provide two hours of pay for each of two recommended vaccine doses.

Some grocery chains are providing incentives to workers to get vaccinated. Lidl is giving workers who get vaccinated $200 in extra pay, while Kroger is offering $100. Aldi and Trader Joe's are providing workers two hours of extra pay for each dose. Starbucks is offering two hours of paid time off for each dose. And discount retailer Dollar General is offering four hours of pay after workers receive their final dose of a vaccine.

US Today reported that Dollar General’s archrival, Dollar Tree, will not provide time off or extra pay to workers.

“We strongly encourage our associates to get vaccinated and will support them by providing flexibility in scheduling and ensuring they incur no costs for the administration of the vaccine,” Dollar Tree spokesperson Kayleigh Painter said in an email.

Yogurt maker Chobani said it will provide six hours of time for its employees to get vaccinated, including its manufacturing workers.

Others, including Amazon, Target and Walmart, are not committing to provide any extra pay or time off to workers to get their shots.

In some cases, employers that are offering vaccination incentives are requiring proof – a bureaucratic trail – of inoculation to get their extra pay or certify their paid time off. They feel that’s only appropriate inasmuch as they work in an environment with co-workers who may want to know that their co-workers actually follow a protocol. But are they legally entitled to this information and in what manner?

What’s an employer to do? It’s a dilemma. You could be damned if you do and damned if you don’t.

According to a recent report by Perceptyx, six in 10 workers would get the covid-19 vaccine if their employers provided a $100 incentive. Workers who feel their manager cares about them as human beings are more likely to get the vaccine.

Those are some of the findings revealed in by Perceptyx, which polled more than 1,000 workers across the country. 

Workers remain split on requiring the vaccine to return to work: 53% said employers should not require the vaccine, and 43% said they’d consider leaving their company if required to be vaccinated. 

These feelings were even more prevalent among essential workers: 60% said employers shouldn’t require it, and 51% said mandatory vaccination might cause them to leave their company. Still, 64% of those polled by Perceptx said there is no safe return to work until all employees are vaccinated. About 54% said they would feel safe returning to the workplace as long as they had received the vaccine, even if others hadn’t, and 52% would get the vaccine so they wouldn’t have to wear a mask at work, although the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends wearing a mask even once fully vaccinated.

According to Biz Journal, legal experts have noted that employers are better off encouraging employees to get vaccinated against covid-19, rather than requiring it, since mandates could backfire and workers could pursue legal exemptions. An increasing number of companies are offering enticements to motivate workers to become vaccinated. 

“We do not want our employees to have to choose between receiving a vaccine and coming to work, so we are working to remove barriers (e.g., travel time, mileage, child care needs, etc.) by providing frontline hourly team members with a one-time payment equivalent of four hours of regular pay,” Dollar General said in a statement.

After reading about these options, it becomes clear that employers should be concerned about their workers but if they offer any incentives, hours off or extra dollars, then perhaps it would be better to create a system that does not require a record. Indeed, give your employees time off to get vaccinated with an honor system and not making a list otherwise the unintended consequences of trying to be helpful could result in lawsuits.

Here are a few other points to take into account:

• If you make a list, what will you do with the information you collect from employees about the administration of the vaccine, or the refusal to get the vaccine? Will you be coaxed by officials, hospitals, or manufacturers into revealing this data?

• With whom will you share this information internally: co-workers, supervisors, no one, or everyone? Do they have the right to know this without permission?

• Will employees who get vaccinated be favored by employers, considered for promotion over those who don’t? How will it impact the company’s merit system? Will it become an unintentional factor? How will it work in the hiring process? Will it be a human resources nightmare?

Covid-19 has turned society and businesses upside down. Reopening is vital to the welfare of the country but be careful how you choose the lady or the tiger.