For millions of Americans, the coronavirus pandemic has presented myriad challenges and disruptions at home, at work, and in forecasting the months ahead. With vaccines slowly reaching more and more of us, employers are now wading into the murky waters of learning about their teams’ vaccination plans. Here’s how to ask the right questions.
While it may be a few more months until working-age Americans have widespread access to the COVID-19 vaccine, many business leaders need to forecast plans that may be affected by their teams’ willingness to get the jab. Understanding how many employees will take the vaccine can influence everything from long-term work from home plans, renewing leases, finding smaller office space, rotating working hours, and making decisions on when to bring everyone together again.
As with anything that has to do with the information as personal and as sensitive as medical information, it’s important to tread carefully when seeking more information from your team. It is legal to ask about vaccination plans, but you should be mindful how, when, and why you ask.
For Business Reasons. When asking your team if they’ve received vaccinations, make sure the answer is tied to specific business reasons, such as renewing a lease or if you’re planning on hiring more staff. By asking team members right now, you may accidentally reveal underlying health conditions. From there, it’s easy to cross the line into questioning that may violate the Genetic Information Act, an anti-discrimination bill passed in 2008. Keep it simple; yes or no, and thank them for trusting you that much.
Keep It Vague. Some businesses may be quick to share internally how many of its employees have received the vaccine, and for good reason. Hearing that many of their co-workers may help team members to feel safer and encourage them to return to the office confidently. However, it can get a little tricky sharing exact numbers of those who have been vaccinated and those who haven’t, especially in smaller companies. Instead, deal in round numbers or even percentages. That will allow leaders to be open and honest about whether or not the majority of the firm is safe, without sharing too much private information.
Vaccine Cards. Anyone who gets the vaccine will get two verification cars with the date, location, and information about the type of vaccine they received. One of those cards is for the benefit of employers, but don’t ask to keep that information permanently. Don’t require that information to be on file, especially if your company isn’t big enough to have a human resources department that already stores sensitive personal information. Having that type of medical information in employee files puts everyone in a rough situation if it were somehow to be made public. For companies that are large enough to warrant it, there are software firms that link pharmacy data to employers to safely and securely store digital versions of vaccine records. Salesforce recently added secure and opt-in vaccine registration, scheduling, and storage options as well.
We may be facing the realities of a pandemic for several more months, but leaders need to be thinking weeks, months, and years ahead at all times. Having a system and a plan in place to handle vaccine information safely and responsibly will reduce risk and mistrust as these vaccinations become more widespread.
Stick with it; we’re getting closer to normal every week!