Bosses should require vaccines before staff returns to office
Sometimes leaders must tune out the squeaky wheels and do what’s best for the entire organization, and wise executives should require employees to get vaccinated against COVID-19 before returning to the office.
Some will undoubtedly howl about the injustice of it all. How dare my boss make vaccination or a doctor’s note a prerequisite for employment? My body, my choice, some will proclaim. Another infringement on personal liberty!
Get a grip. The U.S. Constitution did not protect Typhoid Mary, and it does not give you the right to become a superspreader. If someone is among the tiny percentage of adults who should skip the vaccine due to a medical condition, they can get a note.
Employers are entirely within their rights to require vaccinations to ensure a safe workplace, and most Americans support it, according to multiple surveys.
Seventy percent of Americans want employers to re
quire a vaccine before a returnto-office order, according to Glassdoor, the workplace research and review site. More than three-quarters said they would get vaccinated.
“COVID-19 has triggered a new wave of employee expectations, from incentives to get a vaccine to more flexible work options, even after it’s safe to return to the office,” said Carina Cortez, Glassdoor’s chief people officer. “Employers must take employee feedback into account to determine what is best for their workforce, including how to best support employees who plan to get the vaccine, and employees who do not.”
Opinions about requiring vaccination differed based on age group. While 84 percent of 35- to 54-year-olds supported a mandate, only 58 percent of those between 18 and 34 thought their bosses should take a heavy hand.
No one should be surprised that younger people feel less strongly about vaccination. Many of them are essential workers who have risked their health and possibly contracted the disease without the severe consequences experienced by older people.
We also know that younger people do a poor job of assessing risk or understanding the consequences.
Perhaps that is why 20 percent of essential workers who are not involved with health care say they will wait and see what happens before they get a jab, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation, a health care research nonprofit. Most of them are younger than 50.
This group is not necessarily anti-vaccine—that’s another column—but they are on the fence.
An employer mandate would likely push them toward obtaining protection from a lifechanging, possibly life-ending illness.
“Essential workers are more likely than those who are doing their jobs from home to say they will get the vaccine ‘only if required,’” Glassdoor’s pollster wrote.
Here is where executives earn their money. The latest data show that remaining indoors with someone infected is the most likely way a person will contract COVID-19.
Social distancing is not enough if you are sharing an indoor space with an infected person for hours at a time, according to Massachusetts Institute of Technology researchers.
“Above all, our study makes clear the inadequacy of the Six-Foot Rule in mitigating indoor airborne disease transmission, and offers a rational, physically informed alternative for managing life in the time of COVID-19,” the study’s authors wrote.
There are only two solutions to establishing a safe workplace: require everyone to wear a mask all the time or allow only vaccinated people in the room.
Here is where the courage comes in. If an executive requires a vaccine to return to the office, some employees will cry foul and threaten lawsuits until the cows come home. Those who are grateful will likely say nothing.
Running a company is not a popularity contest. Yes, bosses should want happy workers. Health must come first. Leaders know when to ignore the noise in the name of the greater good.
Since COVID vaccines became available, most employers have resisted requiring them because they were hard to get. Many office-based companies kept people at home because they felt no rush to put people at risk.
Now, though, anyone can obtain a vaccine with little wait and at no cost.
Managers who want workers to return to the office owe those of us who are health conscientious, who support vaccination and worry about variants. We have more of a right to a virus-free workplace than those who would put us at risk and ignore public health.
More importantly, employers have the power to nudge workers who are on the fence toward doing what’s best for the community. We need many more people to get vaccinated to reach herd immunity, which is the only way to stop mutations.
Texas is at a dangerous inflection point; we need employers to help maintain the momentum toward ending the COVID-19 pandemic.