Feedback from members indicates that many are actively thinking about how we can live with Covid in the community and our establishments including what we need to do to prepare for the future.
Employers are not able to compel your workers to be vaccinated, and it may very well be that workers refuse to receive a vaccination for a variety of personal reasons; however, you can strongly encourage workers to be vaccinated for health and safety reasons.
In most workplaces, the best approach will be one where an employer encourages employees to get the vaccination and provides them with access to information and support. If an employer can make it easy and positive for employees, then employees are much more likely to agree to the vaccination. Please refer to our Vaccinations Guide and Template Policy here.
Having more of the workforce vaccinated will help protect our communities and the Government has indicated it will also mean less reliance on lockdowns in the future. Another benefit of a highly vaccinated population is being able to start reconnecting with the rest of the world.
All workplaces, including hospitality venues, have important roles to play and if you are considering creative ways of encouraging vaccinations amongst your teams, here is some further information and considerations:
There are plenty of ways you can support your staff to get vaccinated.
- Ensure your team knows how to book. bookmyvaccine.nz , contacting 0800 28 29 26, speaking to their GP or getting in touch with their local pharmacy that may be offering vaccinations.
- Let them know where the nearest vaccination centre is.
- Make sure your employees can take time off if needed to get the vaccination.
- Put in place a vaccination policy in your Health & Safety plan. Please refer to our GUIDE & POLICY: Vaccinations in the workplace.
- Hang posters in back of house area, you can find more in the Covid-19 vaccine toolkit, here.
- Consider how you use any communication channels with your staff. – do you have a group email or Facebook group? Team meetings or pre-service huddles could be good places to bring it up.
- Consider organising information sessions, possibly with a nurse or medical professional.
- Organise a staff trip to a vaccination centre, some are currently setup as drive-through.
- You can check with the District Health Board whether your workplace is eligible to provide vaccinations on site.
Talking with people who are vaccine-hesitant?
It’s important to recognise and support people who need more reassurance or information to make the decision about getting vaccinated.
- Here’s a discussion between four health professionals where they share their thoughts, knowledge and experiences of the COVID vaccine in Straight Up with Dr. Lily Fraser – The Panel.
- The Workshop, an independent research organisation has developed a guide for speaking to those that are vaccine-hesitant.
- In this The Spinoff article, Kate Hannah shares some thoughts on how to talk to loved ones who are vaccine-hesitant. Kate is a cultural historian at Te Pūnaha Matatini, an Aotearoa New Zealand Centre of Research Excellence for Complex Systems and Networks. She is leading a research project investigating disinformation and Covid-19.
- Here’s Nick, who tells of his experience getting the COVID vaccine in a video recently posted on the Ministry of Health’s Facebook page.
- The World Health Organisation has a range of COVID-19 myth-buster resources, several related to the vaccine.
- The Whole Truth is a COVID-19 fact-checking series on the Stuff website written with the support of an expert advisory panel. Most recently, The Whole Truth wrote about immunocompromised people and whether the COVID-19 vaccine is right for them.