At the beginning of September, President Biden laid out plans to mandate vaccines or testing for millions of employees. The key here is that he "laid out plans to mandate," it was not the official mandate. The unveiling of this upcoming plan made both businesses and employees extremely apprehensive. How do I ensure my business is compliant? How do I keep my employees comfortable in the workplace? A lot of business owners are asking themselves these questions. So, let's talk about it...
What is the mandate?
As we said, there is no official mandate yet. The Occupational Safety & Health Administration (OSHA) is responsible for developing and releasing the Emergency Temporary Standard (ETS). President Biden's announcement was simply an unveiling of the plan and a notice of what is to come. So far, we anticipate the new standard will require all employers with 100+ employees to ensure their workers are vaccinated or tested weekly.
How can businesses prepare?
While we wait for the official ETS to be released, we can start preparing by getting feedback from employees and implementing new systems so they will be ready to go when the ETS comes out. At this time, it is crucial to take employees comfort and wellbeing into consideration. Open and honest dialogue about the mandate will be necessary to retain employees and abide by the new standard. You should also begin researching how to safely manage, track, and share vaccination records as well as Covid test results for when these precautions are required to help you get ahead of the curve.
How can businesses host open conversations with employees?
There are lots of ways to offer a safe space to talk about the new mandate.
1. Carve out time for your teams to meet and provide a leader with questions to keep the conversation on the right path.
2. Hire an expert to talk to your entire office about the logistics of implementing this new standard and how it will affect employees day-to-day. Taking the unknowns out of the situation can remove a lot of anxiety for employees.
3. Have HR host one-on-one conversations so employees feel welcome to share their honest questions, feedback, and concerns about the mandate.
How can GotTheTest help?
GotTheTest's end-to-end Covid diagnostics solution platform can help streamline and manage all efforts that come with this new mandate. Our HIPAA compliant patient portal is the safest way to upload and save both vaccination records and Covid test results. Employees and families can now easily track, manage, and share all of their Covid records in one place. We also offer Covid testing appointments that are proctored by a Telehealth provider so your employees can take a self-administered test in the comfort of their homes before coming into the office. They'll feel confident in their result as the Telehealth provider is there through every step of the test to offer guidance, answer questions, and verify the result. After the 30-40 minute appointment is complete, the employee will have a test result uploaded to their patient portal, as well as emailed and texted to them, so they can head into the office with peace of mind.
Our mission is to make Covid testing as hassle-free and accessible as possible so we want to do anything we can to take stress away from your business with the unveiling of this new mandate. If you would like to learn more about our solutions, please email we@gotthetest.com.
