Employers Have a Crucial Role to Play in Covid-19 Vaccinations Posted by AVCU on 7:58 AM

 Now that the first vaccines are being rolled out to combat the Covid-19 pandemic, a major challenge is persuading people to take them. Getting 70% or more of the public vaccinated or recovered from the Covid-19 virus is critical to containing the disease and creating herd immunity. However, recent surveys indicate that a considerable number of people across the United States are hesitant to take the new vaccines. Overcoming this reluctance — which cuts across geographic, political, religious, and demographic groups but is more prevalent in certain subgroups, especially Black Americans — is critical to ending the pandemic in the United States.

The reasons for this hesitancy are varied — from skepticism about the science to worries that the approval process has been too fast or politicized to safety concerns about being first for something so new. Others distrust all vaccines.

While federal and state public health agencies are leading the charge in educating the public, their efforts can be dramatically amplified if employers join the effort. Working together, public health agencies and employers can increase transparency about the data, the allocation process, and vaccine efficacy while fostering trust and confidence in the process and safety of the vaccine. Here is a playbook that can help employers design and implement their campaigns to drive vaccination and address health equity issues.

1. Understand your population and focus on inequities.

Spend time to understand the cultural beliefs that may dissuade employees from getting vaccinated. Engage your diversity, equity, and inclusion professionals to connect with all demographics in your employee base, and conduct surveys now to understand employees’ attitudes toward and beliefs about vaccination. This information will help you develop a more targeted education and engagement plan, leveraging existing public health materials. Once you have a baseline, you can continue to conduct pulse surveys of your workforce over the coming months to see what’s changed and how to target interventions most effectively.

2. Make it local.

Personalized communications will be crucial in the campaign to foster trust. In addition, employers, working in concert with or in parallel to public health officials, should try to identify the right parties and channels in the company and local community to deliver those messages to each subgroup. Leaders can set an example by publicly supporting vaccinations and when they are eligible, getting vaccinated themselves.

3. Educate and be transparent.

Create a dynamic program to engage with your people and customers about the goals, safety, and benefits of vaccination. Provide the latest information and be transparent in terms of access challenges and other concerns. Messaging will need to be agile to respond to changing local conditions and should be delivered in a nuanced, culturally sensitive fashion.

4. Leverage data and analytics.

Analytics platforms distill data into meaningful insights and support decision-making. They can help you stay on top of evolving sentiments and behaviors, allowing you to rapidly respond with targeted tactics.

5. Address hurdles and incentivize positive behaviors.

Make sure that people in your workforce do not have to choose between getting paid and getting vaccinated and create policies that protect wages and provide paid time off for vaccination. Recognize the challenges for employees with children and facilitate vaccination during times that are both convenient and feasible. You might provide child care options. When vaccines become more broadly available, you might set up an on-campus vaccination site. If employees are getting a vaccine that requires a second dose, educate them about the importance of getting both doses and provide incentives to do so through your employee recognition and rewards programs.

Now is the time for employers to step up and be a part of the solution to ending the worst public health crisis in a century and addressing the inequities in our health system and society that the pandemic has exposed. Taking the actions that we have laid out will pay dividends now by getting people back to work faster and reviving our economy and down the road by building the infrastructures needed to overcome similar challenges in the future. By joining the campaign to persuade people to get vaccinated, employers will not only help themselves, they will also help society overcome deep-seated anti-vaccination sentiments that are a danger to us all.