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More companies are insisting their employees get the COVID vaccine, according to a new nationwide survey.
A majority of employers — or 52 percent — will require vaccinations as a condition of employment by the end of the year, up from 21 percent currently, according to the survey.
“The Delta variant has made employers take new actions to keep their workers — and workplaces — safe and healthy,” said Jeff Levin-Scherz, population health leader for Willis Towers Watson, the risk consulting firm that conducted the survey.
Even more employers are likely to institute vaccine requirements, he said, in the wake of the FDA’s full approval of the Pfizer vaccine last month.
Federal law generally allows employers to require a vaccination, according to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, though an employer must allow exceptions for religious, health or certain other reasons.
Some employers had said they would wait for the Food and Drug Administration to give its full approval to the COVID jab before making it a requirement. Before August, the Pfizer vaccine, for instance, was being given under an “emergency use authorization” from the FDA as part of the effort to speed the vaccines through the normal approval process.
Now, among employers that haven’t announced a vaccine requirement, nearly a third – or 29 percent – say they are planning or considering making vaccination a requirement to gain access to the workplace, and 21 percent are planning or considering vaccination as a condition of employment for all employees, according to the survey, which included 961 companies and was conducted between Aug. 18 and 25.
Among the companies that have recently implemented vaccine requirements for some or all of their employees are Citibank, Facebook, Goldman Sachs, Google, McDonald’s, Amtrak and Cisco.
Some have even threatened to fire employees who refuse to get vaccinated.
Companies are also requiring vaccinations for new hires as a growing number of job postings illustrate.
Andrew Challenger, senior vice president of the executive outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas, said his company’s surveys of companies throughout the pandemic never showed more than 3 percent of firms that would mandate a vaccine.
“But then the dam broke over the last three or four weeks when we saw dozens of Fortune 500 companies saying they would require vaccinations among their employees. It gave a lot of cover for smaller companies to follow their lead,” he said.
Challenger, Gray is currently conducting a survey of companies and the preliminary results show that as of the last week of August, 30 percent of respondents say they will require vaccinations up from three percent in July.
“Companies have changed their tune very quickly,” Challenger said.
Meanwhile, in the Wills Tower survey, less than 20 percent of companies are holding out a carrot for employees, including a payout of up to $200 for workers to get vaccinated while 2 percent are offering a discount to vaccinated employees or imposing a fee on those that have not gotten the jab, according to the survey.
Another 17 percent are considering health premium rewards or surcharges to encourage vaccinations.
Delta Airlines recently announced that unvaccinated employees will need to pay an extra $200 a month for their health benefits.
Defending the surcharge, a Delta Air Lines spokesperson pointed to the cost of the average hospital stay for an employee with COVID: $40,000. The surcharge would apply to the entire workforce and a proof or documentation of vaccination will be needed to avoid it, the spokesperson said.
Most companies — or 62 percent — are not relying on the honor system and are requiring proof of employees’ vaccinations, according to the survey.
Meanwhile, many companies say pandemic-related procedures aren’t likely to end anytime soon. Nearly 40 percent of employers expect their pandemic-related policies to stay in place until mid 2022.
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