Jane Williams, University of Sydney and Holly Seale, UNSW
Compulsory COVID vaccination is in the news again now Qantas has just announced its employees will need a shot.
This follows fruit and vegetable processing company SPC announcing vaccines would be compulsory for onsite staff, a move that’s attracted some backlash.
If you are an employer and thinking about a vaccine mandate for your workers, there are many things to consider. And if you want to go down that path as a last resort here’s how to do it ethically.
Internationally, COVID vaccines have been mandated in sectors such as health care, education and business.
In Australia, public health orders have paved the way for mandates in workplaces, such as quarantine and construction. Now attention is turning to vaccine mandates in businesses.
The federal government says in the absence of specific health orders, it’s up to businesses to decide if a vaccine mandate is appropriate. Aside from vaccine mandates in aged care, the federal government says vaccine mandates are not for government to impose. Not everyone agrees. Employers are also receiving updated messages about whether a vaccine mandate is legal and under what circumstances.
If vaccine mandates are introduced at work, it’s critical they are introduced ethically. And the World Health Organization has guidance on this.
Of the issues it raises, two stand out as being directly relevant to workplaces — necessity and trust.
In other words, is a vaccine mandate a necessary, reasonable and proportionate response to a public health problem? This is not an easy or one-off decision. This is because the background risk of COVID infection can change rapidly, as we are seeing in Australia.
Second, how can employers approach the issue, while fostering mutual trust between them, their workers and public health agencies? The issue of fostering trust is what we’ll focus on.
You might not actually need a vaccine mandate. Offer alternatives before mandates, where possible, as a way of promoting trust.
This is called offering a “least restrictive alternative”, a liberty-promoting approach that aims not to coerce people unless or until they have been given every opportunity to be vaccinated because they choose to be.
Here are things businesses can and should try to promote choice:
The second way employers can foster trust, is to make decisions in a way that’s fair and to ensure stakeholders feel supported and included. This procedural justice or fair decision-making process is intended to promote legitimacy — the idea that the decision is a good one — and deal with any disagreements.
One such approach argues decisions must be fully transparent, relevant, revisable and enforceable.
Here are some ways businesses can help ensure processes are fair when they are considering a mandate and whether they should decide to impose one:
Qantas consulted with staff to better understand the appetite for a mandate. More than half the company’s workers responded to a questionnaire, and three-quarters of those who answered supported a vaccine mandate.
A questionnaire is a good start, as is the company’s policy of providing paid time off to receive the vaccine.
Without more information, it’s difficult to know how well supported workers who didn’t support the mandate or didn’t respond to the questionnaire might be feeling, or what Qantas is doing to address this as part of its mandate process.
We also don’t know whether the company used less liberty restricting methods to try to maximise vaccination. (Telstra, for example, offered every vaccinated worker a voucher for use in its store).
Qantas has announced that the mandate applies to all staff. But such a blanket mandate is difficult to justify. Staff should feel safe at work, but there are many different kinds of roles in a company the size of Qantas and not all of those roles take place in high exposure settings.
Maintaining and promoting trust is important when it comes to vaccine mandates. It matters to people subject to mandates and it matters to the public more broadly because mutual trust is a cornerstone of effective public health engagement.
People should feel supported in their health decision making and they should trust and feel respected by their employers.
We’re seeing increasing politicisation about COVID public health measures, in Australia and internationally. This is a social harm we should avoid.
Jane Williams, Researcher at Sydney Health Ethics, University of Sydney and Holly Seale, Associate professor, UNSW
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article