Working through the practicalities of how to implement and enforce such rules while respecting exempted groups has given some employers pause, he said. Also, bills are pending in several state legislatures that aim to prohibit or limit employer vaccine policies.
Further, the emergency authorization for the three Covid-19 vaccines being administered in the U.S. includes a requirement that patients be informed that they have the option to refuse, adding confusion to the idea of a mandate, he said.
“With clients I’m seeing, it’s a combination of those three things that’s stopping them from making it a mandatory policy,” he said.
Offering Incentives
Instead, companies are trying to make it easy and attractive for workers to get vaccinated. Whirlpool Corp. plans to allow employees who’ve had their shots back to the office in its home state of Michigan over the summer as local conditions and rules allow, joining factory workers and others who couldn’t do their jobs from home.
The home-appliance maker, which has about 27,000 U.S. workers, began offering a $200 incentive for vaccination, Chief Financial Officer Jim Peters said.
“We are very strong believers that the vaccine will enable us to bring people back in to the office and it will make the workplace much safer,” he said. “All of our executives who are age eligible got appointments and wanted to set an example that we thought it was appropriate to get it.”
Salesforce.com Inc. plans a May reopening of its Salesforce Tower headquarters in San Francisco, inviting vaccinated workers to volunteer for groups of no more than 100 employees who will work on specific floors. Testing will be required twice a week and “Covid health officers” will ensure that safety protocols are being followed, the company said in a blog post.
Some companies are offering shots on site. CVS Health Corp. is working with more than a dozen employers, including Delta Air Lines Inc., to inoculate their workforces. The health-care company has administered more than 30,000 doses to Delta employees at clinics hosted in a concourse at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport and another at the Delta Flight Museum on the airline’s corporate campus in Atlanta.
An April survey by Arizona State University and the Rockefeller Foundation found that 65% of companies in North America planned to offer vaccine incentives to workers and 87% would inoculate workers at company facilities. The survey found that 44% would require vaccinations for workers, while almost a third said they planned to encourage vaccines but wouldn’t require them.
“I do believe that comfort with vaccines among employers is increasing all the time,” Mara Aspinall, a professor at ASU’s College of Health Solutions and co-leader of the project. “They’re using all the tools available to get employees back to the workplace in as safe and sustainable a way as possible.”
The U.S. unit of Paris-based Schneider Electric SE in March worked with local public health authorities to run a vaccination clinic for employees in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. The maker of electrical power products is preparing to reopen its offices in the U.S. starting in early June while maintaining safety protocols, said Steve Sacco, the company’s vice president of safety, environment and real estate.
Schneider is offering eight hours of paid time-off for employees to get shots, but doesn’t plan to require vaccination, Sacco said.
“We never set out on this journey to treat people any differently when they chose to get a vaccine or not,” he said. “First and foremost, it was really about being respectful of our employees’ choice.”
—With assistance from Deena Shanker, Anne Riley Moffat and Angelica LaVito.
This article was provided by Bloomberg News.