No jab? Don't step into office, say 70% employers: Report

As high as 70 per cent of employers would either not allow employees who refuse to get vaccinated to step in to the workplace or would ask them to quit the organisation, according to the job portal Indeed’s survey of 607 businesses and 1211 employees in September 2021.

As companies are calling employees back to offices at least a few days of the week, the study findings highlight that vaccination status determines the employee’s return to office as part of a hybrid working model.

The survey also showed that 94 per cent of employers and 87 per cent of employee respondents want people coming in to work to be vaccinated with at least a single dose. As many as 82 per cent of the workforce and employers surveyed agree vaccination should be made mandatory in the workplace.

Employees and employers also agreed on transparency. Nearly half of all employees leave the matter of vaccine transparency in the hands of their employers. While 87 per cent of all employee respondents believe entry to the workplace should be for people who are vaccinated at least once, 43 per cent believe that people coming into the workplace need not carry vaccination certificates and 41 per cent think they need not know the vaccination status of other employees. This is probably because they are aware that their employer may not allow employees who aren’t vaccinated to enter the workplace, the note said.

“Vaccination has emerged as a top hiring trend. Some businesses are either making it mandatory or heavily encouraging vaccination among their new hires. But, the common trend across employees and employers is that a majority of both employers (52 per cent) and employees (61 per cent) are in favour of Hybrid work models as compared with either going to work every day or working from home every day. The future of work is definitely hybrid,” said Sashi Kumar, head of sales, Indeed.

The country has vaccinated nearly a billion people as of Thursday since starting the vaccination drive on January 16, with 704.4 million receiving the first dose and 291.3 million being fully vaccinated, according to the government data. India’s new case load was 18,343 on Wednesday, with 160 deaths from the infection.

IT major Wipro had its leaders returning to office in mid-September, while rival TCS has informed employees to return to their base location by November 15.  

Meanwhile, US tech giants like Microsoft, Apple, Google, Facebook, and Amazon have pushed back office reopening plans because of a surge in Covid-19 cases in the US due to the Delta variant of the virus.

The survey drew employee respondents from across organisation size and type, community identity, and age groups.

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