Tag: vaccine mandate

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What you need to know about the Biden Administration’s new vaccine mandate

Summary

  • The Biden Administration issued a new vaccine mandate on Thursday, Nov. 4

  • The mandate includes two different rules, one from OSHA and one from CMS. Both have Jan. 4 deadlines.

  • Businesses must reassess how they track vaccination, testing, and PTO for their employees.

 

Back in September of this year, the Biden Administration announced a controversial vaccine mandate. On Thursday it released an update, explicitly outlining two new rules for U.S. businesses to follow heading into the new year. 

Here is what you need to know.

Rule #1

Issued by OSHA, businesses with more than 100 employees must require all their workers to be vaccinated or to provide weekly negative test results. The rule affects roughly 84 million workers across the United States. Here are some further details:

  • The deadline is Jan. 4. Businesses must ensure that all their employees are vaccinated or at least are willing to provide weekly negative test results before this date.
  • Employers are subject to fines up to $13,653 per willful violation of the mandate.
  • Unvaccinated employees must wear masks while at work.
  • Workers must receive paid time off to get vaccinated as well as sick leave if additional recovery time is needed.
  • Employers do not need to pay for weekly testing.
  • The federal rule will take precedence over any inconsistent state laws that deny employers the authority to require vaccination, masks, and testing.
  • While it is mostly up to employers to enforce these rules, OSHA does plan to conduct workplace inspections to check that employers are staying in compliance.

Rule #2

Beyond the OSHA mandate, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services has also issued a rule requiring 17 million people working in Medicare and Medicaid facilities to be fully vaccinated, with no weekly negative testing alternative. It will impact 76,000 federally funded healthcare facilities in the United States. Below are a few extra details:

  • All Medicare and Medicaid facilities must ensure their employees are completely vaccinated by a Jan. 4 deadline – the same deadline as the OSHA rule.
  • Facilities that do not comply could face fines, denial of funding, and possible termination from the Medicaid and Medicare programs.
  • Workers can apply for medical or religious exemptions

Going forward

With Biden’s new vaccine mandate comes the inevitable pushback. It’s a tale as old as…well 2020 I guess. 

While Republican lawmakers in various states have already begun drafting efforts to combat the requirements, the private sector is also raising concerns regarding supply chain issues in the cargo industry and labor shortages within healthcare. Regardless of where employers stand on the matter, the fact remains that thousands of dollars are on the line for non-compliance. As such, proper measures need to be taken to maintain a safe and organized workforce. 

Employers should reassess how they are currently tracking employee vaccinations and negative tests. Is there a system in place maintaining up-to-date records for each employee? Are managers automatically notified when a non-compliant employee is scheduled for a shift? Is there a compliance paper trail easily accessible to OSHA auditors when they come knocking? These are all important questions to consider when reviewing how well one’s workforce management system handles the new vaccine mandates.

Employers must also have a plan in place for how to tackle vaccination PTO and sick leave. Implementing specialty time off like this into scheduling processes and effectively tracking it for payroll can sometimes prove tricky without the right solutions in place. 

Interested in finding out more about how your business can prepare for the Jan. 4 deadline? We are here to help. Book a call with us today, or leave your email below and we’ll get back to you. 

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Vaccine mandates: what are they and how should businesses handle them

Summary

  • Under Biden’s mandate, companies with 100+ employees now must require vaccinations or weekly testing for all workers

  • Vaccine mandates face pushback, both currently and in the past, with 45% of the U.S. population choosing not to be vaccinated

  • Businesses can use qualification tags, notifications, and shift questions to manage employee vaccination and testing status

The COVID-19 delta variant is becoming a serious threat across the nation. Mask mandates are back in vogue and remote work is once again looming on the horizon – all this and flu season hasn’t even begun.

In light of all this, many businesses have turned to their own internal vaccine mandates. One of the largest breweries in the world, Molson Coors, announced earlier this year a vaccine mandate for all non-union corporate, sales, and contract employees. Some states like Washington and Connecticut have also issued strict mandates for government and healthcare employees.

Biden’s Mandate

This trend has made its way into federal policy recently with the introduction of President Biden’s new vaccine mandate that will affect around 80 million people. Businesses with over 100 workers now must require vaccinations or weekly testing for all their employees – the alternative is a $14k fine. Ouch.

And the mandate does not stop there.

Anyone involved with the federal government in any capacity must show proof of vaccination with no weekly testing as an alternative. This means federal employees, contractors, and federally funded healthcare workers all are required to be vaccinated.

Government officials in states like Texas, South Carolina, and Florida are pushing back, with many citing the new mandates from the administration as overreaching and unconstitutional. Florida governor Ron DeSantis recently signed an executive order in direct retaliation to Biden’s mandate. The rule bans Florida employers and businesses from requiring people to provide proof of vaccination. Failure to comply with the vaccine passport ban results in a $5,000 fine per case. How this state rule will clash with the federal mandate remains to be seen.

This kind of contention is nothing new.

A Divisive History

Vaccine requirements in the past have almost always been met with resistance, and occasionally even full-blown lawsuits. Medical workers in Houston are suing their hospital a second time now after their first case was dismissed earlier this year. The 61 employees are suing in the wake of being suspended and fired for failure to comply with their hospital’s stringent vaccine requirements.

Unions have also traditionally held anti-vaccine mandate policies.

In Chicago, the police union refused to comply with local vaccine requirements announced last month. In fact, the union is reportedly prepared to go to court over the matter. However, many other unions have changed their policies in light of both Biden’s mandates as well as the FDA’s approval of Pfizer last month. Even so, vaccine mandates are still a topic of division among unions – this is something important for companies to keep in mind when navigating Biden’s new requirements.

Staying Compliant

Needless to say, there is a lot of tension surrounding vaccine passport culture. Whether the new mandates are constitutional or not, the fact of the matter is they are here, and business owners everywhere need to do their best to stay compliant.

For companies with 100+ employees not involved with the federal government, the first step to staying compliant is understanding who is exempt from vaccination.

According to the EEOC, an employer cannot issue a blanket vaccine requirement without providing appropriate exceptions for employees with certain medical conditions or religious beliefs. If workers cite one of these exceptions, employers can only mandate that they provide weekly negative test results.

Understanding the laws and technicalities surrounding all these changes is one thing; effectively adapting a workforce management system to these changes is a whole other matter.

Qualifications and Accommodations

There are two primary areas to keep in mind when dealing with the onset of nationwide vaccine mandates: qualifications and accommodations. Managers need to learn how to properly balance vaccine qualification requirements for specific jobs with accommodations for employees that meet exemptions. Accomplishing this balance will translate to an organized and collaborative workforce.

To potentially assist with balancing qualifications and accommodations, Workforce.com offers a few useful features.

The Limiting Scheduling According to Qualifications feature allows managers to keep track of and update employee certifications required for specific jobs. Since vaccines are essentially a kind of certification now, this feature is nearly essential in 2021. By adding a vaccinated status to the customizable qualifications list, managers are able to automatically restrict shifts to various employees.

Joseph Cuellar, a software consultant at Workforce.com, notes, “recently we’ve seen a lot of companies use the qualifications feature to make sure they’re on top of vaccination requirements.” In the coming months, this trend is likely to continue.

Another way for businesses to manage their COVID-19 vaccine and testing requirements is to have employees answer pertinent questions when clocking in. With Workforce.com, managers can prompt employees with questions like these to confirm that they understand the vaccine and testing requirements associated with employment, or confirm that they’ve not exhibited symptoms of COVID-19.

As previously mentioned, these vaccine related qualifications for shifts must be balanced with accommodations.

Some employees may meet one of the two exceptions for getting vaccinated, and organizations should consider properly accommodating them. If they choose not to, they run the risk of losing significant human capital at a time when national staffing shortages are plaguing various industries.

To successfully accommodate exempt employees, both the qualifications tool as well as clock-in questions may be used. Managers can also send weekly reminder notifications to exempt employees to get tested. They can also create a custom qualification tag for testing status that expires after a week. As a daily safeguard, clock-in questions regarding proof of negative tests can also be used.

Vaccine-heavy Future

At the end of the day, if your company has over 100 workers, it is safest to assume that you’ll need a way to keep track of vaccination status across your workforce. Tracking the status of vaccinations and negative test results can be complicated, but there are ways to make it a clear and concise process with workforce management solutions.

Times are hard. Let us make them a little easier for you. Chat with us today over the phone about handling vaccines and testing requirements, or leave your email below and one of our team members will be in touch.