How to approach vaccination requirements in recruitment

In my last post, I talked about some of the challenges facing businesses of all sizes at present regarding the current vaccination conundrum that many businesses are facing. As part of this, another topic that many businesses have sought advice around recently is how to approach vaccination requirements in recruitment – with businesses on both sides of the pro-choice / pro-vax debate confiding to me in confidence that they feel some trepidation to express their organisation’s views publicly on the matter or as part of their recruitment process for fear of getting steamrolled by somebody of a differing view. Those who have preferred to let their employees make their own choices have expressed fears about whether they have done enough to discharge their OH&S responsibilities to all of their staff (including the conscientious objectors) and many of those with a mandatory vax program have expressed increasing levels of concerns about getting heckled by conscientious objectors for trying to manage their OH&S obligations and / or in some cases, fulfilling the requirements of the Public Health legislation that binds their industry.

In circumstances like this, where everybody has an opinion, I say be proud of whatever decision you have made and own it. If you have made a conscious decision not to impose a mandatory vax program at your workplace, be proud of the fact that you have decided to give your employees a free choice as to what they want to put into their bodies. For those of you who have mandated vaccinations, good on you for making the difficult decision to take the steps needed to make your workplace safe, even though it may have made you unpopular with some staff, and potentially caused you great angst and expense to obtain, implement and defend your new policy. For those of you who were forced to bring in mandatory vaccination due to the Public Health mandate even though you may not have been completely comfortable with it personally, but you’ve done it to comply, good on you for at least taking the views of other staff into consideration as part of the process, and trying to make the transition into this brave new world of ours as manageable for all staff and as painless as possible.

Obviously, if you are a business that has decided not to impose any vaccination requirements on your workforce, then you are quite fortunate in rarely having to communicate or defend your decision, however, one of the key issues that many have raised with us - particularly those who have introduced a mandatory vaccination policy, is how to raise the issue in recruitment without causing damage to their brand or creating awkward conversations at interviews.

Employers in this position can do a number of things including:

1. Covid-19 Vax Policy

Don’t be afraid to tell people straight up before they even apply to the advertisement that you have a COVID vax policy. Research conducted by the Australian Human Resource Institute (AHRI) shows that up to 65-70% of businesses have some kind of COVID vax policy in place. There is absolutely nothing discriminatory or wrong with telling people in your advertisement (particularly in sectors where vaccination has been mandated), “For occupational health and safety reasons, (Insert Company) has a Mandatory COVID Vaccination Policy. Any potential applicants should ensure that they are able to meet this requirement prior to application.”

2. Ask Questions

In your interview with your potential candidate, we recommend double-checking with them to ensure that they are happy to comply with the policy as one of your first questions at the interview. You don’t want to provide them with an offer or get right through your interview, only to find out at the end after you’ve found the perfect candidate and they’ve verbally accepted the role, that they are a conscientious objector to vaccination when your workplace has a mandatory vax policy in place. Avoid this by kicking off your interview fair early on in the piece with a question akin to: “I’m not sure if you may have seen it already in our job advertisement, but I just wanted to make sure that you were aware of our COVID-19 Vaccination policy here, and before we go too much further, I just wanted to be sure that you are vaccinated already or are able and willing to comply with that requirement prior to commencing employment?” If your employee didn’t see the note in your advertisement and is not really willing to proceed on this basis, there is no point in continuing with the interview, and your candidate will likely to get flustered as well, so if this happens, wrap things up fairly quickly and professionally and advise the employee that you are happy to continue with the interview if they like if this is something that they are willing to consider, but otherwise, you will be unable to consider them after the interview if this is not an aspect that they would be prepared to consider.

3. Amend Employment Contracts

Make sure that you amend your employment contracts to reflect that the business now has a vaccination policy in place so that it is clear to your employee from the outset that it is a condition of the employment contract being offered to them that they are to be fully vaccinated.

The last thing that I would recommend is an abundance of caution around setting one set of rules for one set of employees and another for others. If you are not prepared to bring in a mandatory policy, then that is certainly a decision as a business that you need to make, but in the interests of avoiding a potential discrimination claim down the track, we recommend that you ensure that your policy sets clear expectations around who it is intended to apply to, and doesn’t inadvertently allow for one set of rules to be set for employees engaged prior to the policy being implemented, and one for after. If you do need to run two sets of rules, it may be more effective not to have a policy in place at all, or have a non-mandatory vax friendly workplace policy in place instead and utilise strategic recruitment initiatives to slowly skew your staff body into being vaccinated by default through your recruitment processes instead.

If you need help or advice around setting up a vaccination policy in your workplace, please contact us.

By Corey Dyer – HR Dynamics Senior Industrial Relations Specialist

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