My business won’t require vaccine

My company won’t institute or enforce a vaccine mandate, no matter what form it takes.

Maybe cities will demand that businesses require the jab, like New York City did on Monday. Maybe the Biden administration will somehow rescue its mandate, which a federal court has blocked. Maybe other businesses will pressure their peers to join them in forcing vaccines on workers. Regardless, I justify such a big intrusion into my team’s lives. And I’m convinced that respecting the rights of my 300-plus employees is best for everyone involved.

Am I taking sides in a “war on science?” Hardly.

Yes, I support vaccines

The evidence is clear that COVID-19 vaccines are generally safe and apparently effective. The evidence is equally clear that certain populations, especially the elderly and people with preexisting conditions, should get the vaccine because they’re at much higher risk of serious infection and death. I hope people get vaccinated. In fact, I encourage my team to get the jab, and having once traveled to 85 countries over 18 months, I may be one of the most vaccinated and pro-vaccine people on the planet.

But I do believe a vaccine mandate constitutes a war on conscience.

The debate over COVID-19 vaccines is thoroughly politicized and deeply personal for many people, which counsels against forcing people to make such an intimate choice about their health and bodies. Furthermore, employees are generally dependent on their jobs, and it’s fundamentally inappropriate to use their livelihood as leverage to compel action outside the core functions of a business. As a CEO, my narrow rights over employees should stay narrow, and given the complexity of this issue, the prudent course is to give employees the freedom to make their own choice.

Everyone knows the saying about honey and vinegar, and especially on a contentious issue like vaccine mandates, persuasion beats coercion. Other companies prove it. Unlike virtually all its competitors, Delta Airlines criticized the Biden administration’s mandate and says it won’t require current employees to be vaccinated, though it does make lack of vaccination more costly. Yet about 90% of its employees have gotten the jab anyway.

Trusting employees makes sense to me as a CEO. If they’re competent enough to do their job, they’re competent enough to make the decisions they think are best for them and others. That includes deciding to leave the company and work for another business that better reflects their values and beliefs – a fundamental right in the workplace.

By contrast, a mandate shows a lack of trust, which is never a signal a CEO should send. Worse, it sows seeds of distrust across a company. Making vaccination status the standard of rightand-wrong inevitably pits people against each other, creating an environment of fear, anger, and isolation. It’s wrong to surface the details of people’s private lives and personal decisions in a corporate setting. It’s doubly wrong to do so in a way that enables public shaming.

Mandates destroy trust

And what’s hurtful to employees inevitably harms the business. There’s no world in which a workforce focused on vaccination status is operating at the highest levels. The inevitable result is divided attention and deep-seated frustration, all of which distracts from people’s ability to do their jobs. My goal is to empower people to realize their potential through the dignity of work, not hold them back by sucking them into disempowering, politicized debates.

Even a vaccine mandate with a religious or ethical exemption doesn’t make sense. It would give people the same choice they would have taken without the mandate, and the same problems of public shaming and diminished performance would remain. Plus a new problem would arise: A new layer of corporate bureaucracy, which never helps a business serve customers and improve society.

I encourage other CEOs to not implements mandates. Thankfully, I live in Texas, which has banned businesses from enacting mandates and shows no signs of passing and statewide mandate. That’s the right call. No one should force their employees to make such a personal decision – whether a business leader, a mayor, or the president of the United States. Control and coercion will do at least as much harm as help, and my company won’t play a part in it.