The job market is strong in South Florida. Offices are reopening and COVID-19 vaccines are available. So what pandemic policies are companies putting in place?
The COVID-19 vaccine has helped turn around the fortunes of lots of businesses, especially those focused on tourism and hospitality in South Florida. But those same companies may not be requiring vaccines for their employees, even as business picks up and in some cases is better than before the pandemic.
When her employer required it for all workers at the Latrobe-based assisted living facility where she had been a med tech for the past few years, she filed for a religious and medical exemption. She was anxious about potential side effects and concerned that the research behind the vaccine was too new to justify a blanket mandate.
Office politics have been a thing of the past for most of us over the last 18 months, as millions of people worked from home throughout Covid-induced lockdowns.
Now, as many employees return to their offices, tensions appear to be emerging along new lines: those who are vaccinated against Covid, and those who are not.
In a move to further protect workers and customers from COVID-19, United Airlines has told employees who are seeking religious or medical exemptions to the company's vaccine mandate that even if approved, they will be put on temporary leave starting Oct. 2 while the company works to institute safety measures for unvaccinated employees.
As the world—cautiously but inexorably—returns to the office, an inescapable concern is how to deal with those who don’t want to return.
That’s a fair question. Some people are going to oppose returning to the office versus working at home. That opposition is legitimate. It could be rooted in work–family balance, flexibility, commuting, workplace distractions, comfort, clothing, conformity, or a hundred other concerns.
But how are leaders to know who is going to resist?
Microsoft said that it will indefinitely postpone its return-to-work transition as new COVID-19 infections continue to surge driven by the contagious delta variant.
Confirmed in a company blog post, the software giant reversed its decision to have employees back in the office for in-person work by Oct. 4, which was made in an announcement in August.
This time around, the company did not provide a concrete date for employees to return to the office.