What you need to know about vaccine mandates in the workplace - CityNews Toronto
/This is an excerpt of an article written by Dilshad Burman originally published in CityNews Toronto. Watch the interview and read the full article here.
If an employer chooses to frame a vaccine policy for their workplace, Human Resources expert Janet Candido says it is essential that they remain accommodating and adaptable.
“The issue as we’ve seen is very divisive and you’re either on one side or the other,” said Candido. “So employers have to be very flexible about how they approach any policy around this to their employees.”
Provide options and have good reasons
Candido suggests employers should offer three basic options to their employees:
Get vaccinated and attend the office/workplace to work in-person
If unvaccinated and attending the office/workplace, agree to COVID-19 testing at least twice a week
If able to work effectively from home, do not go into the office/workplace and work remotely, whether vaccinated/unvaccinated
She adds that working from home may not be the best solution long-term for some employers and in that case, they could consider a hybrid solution to help employees ease back into the routine — where people work from home for some part of the week and attend in-person for the rest of the week, working towards returning to in-person work full time.
“For two years, we’ve been hearing about the transmission of this and how dangerous it is and how easily transmitted it is. We can’t expect people to suddenly, come Monday, be prepared to all be in the same room together,” said Candido.
Candido says there are many benefits to having all employees in the office like being able to “access the collective brain of the people in the office, which you don’t have the same access to when you’re working remotely.”
“Anything that is improved by collaboration is best in person,” she added.
However, if an employer insists on having employees work in person, Candido says they should be able to back it up with some solid reasoning.
“Be prepared to answer the question ‘why?’ Why do you need me to come back to the office? What was not happening before that will be improved by my being in the office?” she said. “You really need to think through — do you need people to come back to the office and if so, what does that look like?”
Day-to-day management
Candido says while policy-making is tricky to navigate, it’s also important to be just as cognizant and careful when managing day-to-day workings once the vaccine policy is in place.
She cautions against unwittingly creating an ‘us versus them’ environment among employees based on who is vaccinated or unvaccinated and who chooses to come to the office as opposed to those who work from home.
“You have to be careful .. that you’re not pitting one group of employees against the other,” by treating them differently, she said.
In addition, Candido says to guard against the “out of sight, out of mind” mentality.
“It’s easy to fall into a trap of … inadvertently favouring the employees you can see, the ones that are there in front of you, at the expense of the ones that are working from home,” she said.
Most importantly, Candido says employers should focus on the work that is required from the employees and leave aside anything that is extraneous to that.
“It is not your place to convince them to get a vaccine or to not get a vaccine. It’s your place to make sure you’re accommodating their personal decisions in how the work gets done.”
