With a lot of news about employers considering mandating COVID-19 vaccination at work, we've compiled a few key learnings from recent polls and other sources to help you with your broad return-to-office vaccine management plans.
The Top Three Most Important Metrics Determining When All Employees Return to On-Site Work
WestMonroe, a management consulting firm, recently published its Q2 2021 Perspectives executive poll on trending topics. Their latest poll covered several topics related to return-to-office plans and confirmed that the majority (51%) of employers are leaning towards requiring employees to take a COVID-19 vaccine to work on site. With this in mind, the CDC aims to help organizations with best practices for managing vaccines at work, off site and understanding how vaccines affect reopening of some workplaces.
According to WestMonroe's poll respondents, the top three most important metrics that will help them decide when all employees can return to on-site work were:
- 26% Employee willingness to return on-site
- 25% Vaccination % rate among employees
- 17% Social distancing is no longer required
Do Employers Plan on Incentivizing Employees to Get the Vaccine?
With 25% of employers looking to track vaccination rate among employees as a metric for everyone returning to the workplace, most employers are incentivizing employees to get the COVID-19 vaccine. In fact, according to the same WestMonroe poll, according to those surveyed:
- 71% of companies will use incentives to encourage employees to get the vaccine.
- 29% aren't incentivizing employees to get the vaccine.
Employee incentives for getting a COVID-19 vaccine
In order to increase vaccination rates among employees, some employers are leveraging financial and non-financial awards for COVID-19 vaccination. Some of our clients have been offering a variety of incentives for increase effectiveness of their vaccine process, including:
- Cash bonuses of $100 or $500
- Retirement contributions
- Gift cards
- Additional paid vacation days
- Free transportation for employees to get the vaccine,
- Vaccine appointment scheduling help
According to a recent HRExecutive article citing a survey by Blackhawk Network, a payments provider, financial incentives like bonuses might just be the winningest strategy for employers to encourage vaccine participation. Their study found that 40% of respondents were unsure about getting the vaccine or did not plan to get it. A third of the total respondents indicated that they would get a vaccine for a $100 financial award or less. (Show me the money!) They are also more likely to encourage their families vaccinated, according to the survey.
Not only is vaccination important in getting employees to return to the workplace, but it also could impact the herd immunity and infection rate in the communities where the workplaces are located.
Keeping Track of Employee Vaccinations
Companies looking to understand the vaccination rate of their employees, encourage those who haven't yet been vaccinated or rewarding those who have will also need a way to track this information. Whether your company is mandating or recommending that you get a vaccine, employers will need a way to manage vaccination information of their employees.
Talk to us about vaccine management, including vaccine administration data, surveys and workflows in Kogniz AssureAI, our SaaS-based platform for safety and security, to see how we're helping our customers to manage their vaccination programs, incentive plans and more.