Littler’s update to its February 2021 COVID-19 Vaccine Employer Survey (we reported on here: see “Corporate Vaccine Policies”) for changes in positions due to the Delta variant and/or increases in COVID case counts shows an increasing number of companies mandating, planning to mandate, or open to the idea of mandating, workforce vaccinations.
While the majority of organizations, represented by more than 1,600 in-house lawyers, HR professionals, and C-suite executives, surveyed this month are encouraging, but not requiring, their workers to get vaccinated, 9% are currently mandating vaccines for some or a subset of their workers (e.g., those who interact with other workers/customers, attend meetings/events) and another 12% plan to impose a mandate for all workers (8%) or specific subsets of workers (4%) in the near future. This compares to 0.5% of employers Littler surveyed in January (for the February report) that had mandated vaccination for all employees and another 9% who at that time planned to mandate vaccination for all or certain employees.
Vaccination policies or planned vaccination policies vary, with 35% of employers indicating that workers must be fully vaccinated or regularly tested to return to the workplace; about one-third indicating that they will terminate the employment of those who refuse to be vaccinated; and 14% indicating that workers who are not fully vaccinated or don’t agree to regular testing will be terminated.
See “More Employer Vaccine Mandates Are Coming After Pfizer's Full Approval” (Corporate Counsel); “Vaccination: To Mandate or Not to Mandate?” (Kelley Drye); and additional resources on our Coronavirus (COVID-19) Resources page.
This post first appeared in the weekly Society Alert!