الجمعة، 22 يناير 2021

Business.com

Business.com

Employee Engagement Is Essential to Success – How to Achieve It

Posted: 21 Jan 2021 02:17 PM PST

As business owners, we want our employees to be passionate about their work and invested in the company. A healthy work environment helps them thrive, and, of course, this affects the bottom line. But what's worse – having an employee quit and leave, or having an employee quit and stay on the job? In other words, they show up for work physically, but they are somewhere else mentally.

Positive attitudes from leaders set the tone for a company's work environment. This impacts how employees feel when they come to work every day. If you want your employees to be engaged in the company, you need to be engaged with your employees.

Really, you need to do five things:

  1. Show your employees you care.
  2. Reward success.
  3. Adhere to your company's mission statement and core values.
  4. Encourage teamwork and a sense of community.
  5. Continually invest in your employees and company.

1. Show your employees you care.

Let your employees know you appreciate their hard work. You can do this with both words and actions. Every company is different, so one act of appreciation may work in one environment but not the other.

As the CEO of MassageLuXe, a leading massage and facial franchise, I can't tell our franchise owners how to show appreciation for their employees. Still, I have my own corporate employees for whom I can show appreciation. I spent considerable time in the hospitality industry, and I also picked up best practices from talking to our franchise owners. I've seen firsthand how much showing appreciation for your employees can make a positive difference.

The "employee of the month" concept may sound trite, as does offering rewards like "best parking space," but companies do that because it works. People appreciate being appreciated.

Little acts of appreciation make a big difference. You can bring in donuts or ice cream to the break room on Fridays or Mondays – or both days! You can give employees a gift or a token of appreciation on their birthday or work anniversary, like a birthday card or a day off. Get the team together once a month to celebrate that month's birthdays with a cake (and compliments for the guests of honor).

These don't have to be expensive gestures, and they will still have a positive impact on the work environment.

2. Reward success.

Raises and promotions are not always part of a position, but it's important for employees to feel as though they have a goal. If their success and hard work are not rewarded, they may not feel encouraged to work as hard as they did in the past. After all, they are invested in their own success, and they need you to be as well.

Rewarding employees can also mean giving them more responsibilities or control in how they perform their duties. Your employees are more likely to feel engaged if they know they have a career and a future with your company. If they know there is a path to a more significant position within the company, they have an incentive to do their best.

Many employees might enjoy the status quo and are content with their positions in the company. However, professional growth should always be encouraged and rewarded.

For those employees who consider their position to be a steppingstone, give them a direction and a goal. They don't need to find another job at another company to step ahead. Make it clear to your employees (during reviews, meetings or informal discussions) that you're going to do everything you can to help them move forward.

What you don't want is an employee who sees no promising career ahead and then becomes content to go through the motions at work and disengage.

3. Adhere to your company's mission statement and core values.

Your whole team, and you as its leader, should embody the company's mission statement and core values. If your company's mission is to improve the lives of its customers through its products or services, this ideal should be evident in the workplace. Employees will feel more engaged with a company if they believe in its mission – and if they strongly feel that the company lives up to its values.

The mission of MassageLuXe is to provide an unparalleled experience that supports and encourages health, wellbeing, and quality of life. Our company's values promote belief in the strength and power of massage therapy and water. To promote our mission and values, MassageLuXe offers treatments to help clients with chronic pain and skin conditions. In fact, new locations are now offering mineral-infused drinking water filtered through a reverse osmosis system to their clients. Our marketing emphasizes the idea that massage therapy is more than a luxury; it is part of a whole-body wellness plan. MassageLuXe franchise owners and employees are continuously trained on the latest health and wellness massage and skincare techniques.

Your company should demonstrate its mission statement and values in every facet of the workplace. If your mission is to improve the lives of your customers, you need to show it in your customer service. Employees and managers should be well versed in the company's mission and the latest techniques and services that can move that mission forward.

4. Encourage teamwork and a sense of community.

Would you rather the talk around the watercooler be workplace gossip or about how the company's softball team beat a competitor over the weekend? Teamwork and a sense of community among employees go a long way. When employees feel like part of a team, they have more incentive to work hard and meet a common goal. This is especially useful when employees work together on a project for a client. It also helps improve customer service, and it becomes evident when employees represent the company in any capacity.

Activating a company sports team is one way to foster community spirit among employees. Another way is for the company to participate in fundraisers or charitable events. You could organize a group outing, like a one-day volunteer activity. The company can build close ties with a charitable organization in the community and develop various fundraising efforts. Allow co-workers to develop a friendly competition to see who can raise the most money, collect the most canned goods, get the most miles sponsored in a community walk, etc. Volunteer and charitable efforts not only build a sense of community among employees, but also give them a sense of pride. Who wouldn't want to work for a company that values helping the outside community?

5. Invest in your employees and your company.

Just as your employees need to feel they have a future, you want to make sure your company is always moving forward. You should always try to improve your business, not just for the success of the company itself, but also so the work atmosphere doesn't become stagnant. This means providing training, updating equipment, and even buying a new microwave for the company break room when it's needed.

One great way to invest in both your company and your employees is to offer a profit-sharing program. This is a retirement plan that gives employees a stake in the company's profits. This not only encourages longevity among employees, but also makes them feel more invested in the company. The company's long-term success really is to their benefit.

If your employees learn new skills, see a future, and feel that you are equally invested in them as they are in the company, this leads to a positive work environment. When your employees thrive, so does your company.

Find the Why Behind Your Move to Agile Marketing

Posted: 21 Jan 2021 10:30 AM PST

There's a reason that we're often admonished to "start with the why." Articulating the key reason behind an action is the best way to both initiate and sustain that action. 

The same is true for adopting Agile ways of working.

"To be Agile" is not a good reason by itself to fundamentally change the way you get work done. It's comparable to saying, "I want to be healthier so I can be healthier." Not only is it confusing, it won't help you stay motivated when you're deciding whether to order a burger or a salad. 

A true Agile transformation is an end-to-end overhaul of your entire process. To make such a big change, especially if it involves adjusting team structure and/or the way you interact with stakeholders, you need to know what you want to get out of it. 

Your Agile why matters not just for motivation but also for measuring, so take the time to identify and document it at the start of your transformation journey, then track your progress to clearly show how the effort of change is paying off. 

Three common drivers toward Agile ways of working

If you know you need to change, but you aren't sure exactly what your why is, here are a few of the most common drivers for change. It's likely that your big why is a combination of something you see here, along with other factors. 

1. Speed to market

Agile is often closely associated with speed, whether that's getting software features to users sooner or implementing a marketing campaign more often. Many of the more traditional marketing departments I work with, for instance, are still putting out only a few huge campaigns per year. 

In a world where people expect real-time responses and up-to-the-second relevance, measuring your release cadence in quarters just doesn't cut it. 

In these situations, sheer speed may be your primary driver for adopting Agile ways of working. But even if you're looking to move faster, make sure your why also includes a nod to the other key component of agility: delivering customer value. 

No matter the framework you use, Agile exists to allow knowledge workers to provide value to their customers early and often. So even if more rapid releases are your primary goal, you can't lose sight of the value of the delivery piece. 

Quickly putting out work that doesn't help anybody isn't going to do you any good. For marketers specifically, creating tons of collateral that's off-brand and missing tracking parameters is a terrible use of Agile. 

Speed may be at the heart of your why, but don't sacrifice brand standards or measurement capabilities on the altar of rapid releases. 

2. Effective collaboration and fewer handoffs

Many organizations, particularly the marketing function, realize that much of their process stagnation stems from inefficient collaboration. 

Maybe people have to meet too often because their communication isn't effective. Maybe a lack of upfront scope alignment creates multiple rounds of revisions, or even a last-minute rejection of work that was considered done. Maybe silos have run amok and work has to pass through multiple teams of specialists, each of which may introduce its own flavor of delays and complications. 

All of these scenarios are solved, or at the very least mitigated, by an effective Agile system. But they are significant, far-reaching issues that can't be solved by optimizing one team's process. That means if your why lies in these areas, you're looking at a big process change for multiple teams. 

You'll need to get agreement both about your big why, likely with some small adjustments to make it highly relevant for each group. You'll also need alignment on what changes will be made first, their expected impact on the big why, and a clear strategy for measuring the success of your transformation efforts (more on that shortly). 

3. Improved alignment around organizational goals

I was recently working with a group of marketing leaders who were creating their first ever departmental backlog. Each of them was throwing out priorities relevant to their own part of the marketing function, but they were struggling to agree on overarching priorities. I suggested that we use the larger goals of the organization as our North Star to make sure what we prioritized within marketing would be supporting the bigger picture, and they admitted that no such goals existed.  

If that sounds familiar, an organization-wide shift to Agile may be just what you need. If, on the other hand, the organization's goals are clear, but functions like marketing struggle to show their impact on those goals, Agile is also the right antidote. 

When alignment like this is your big why, it's important to lean into strong visualization with a digital tool. You'll need to ensure that you can directly tie the day-to-day work of various teams back to the goals of their department, which should in turn correlate to those of the organization as a whole. 

It's practically impossible to achieve this without near universal adoption of a unified tracking tool. Once you have that, however, you can see at a glance what percentage of work ladders up to a particular goal, initiative, objectives and key results, etc. And, more importantly for leaders, you can identify how much work doesn't support any objectives. 

That non-value-adding work should be eliminated, freeing up time and mental space for teams to tackle the important goal-supporting items.

Because it hinges on taking things off people's plates, this type of why can be great for getting buy-in across teams. Positioning it as a way to focus effort and decrease burnout makes this big why one of the easier to sell.

How your why impacts your transformation

As you zero in on the why behind your move to Agile, consider how it will impact your transformation plan. Different objectives lead to different forms of measurement, team structures and Agile frameworks (among other things). 

What you track

Your why should have clear metrics attached to it that indicate whether your transformation is delivering the value you had hoped for.

For example, if you're looking to increase speed to market, establish a delivery baseline pre-Agile and track future releases against that. If your marketing campaigns aren't getting to customers faster after Agile is in place, you'll have a data-driven place to start figuring out what's not working.

When your why is more tied to collaboration, you might want to track how many rounds of review a creative effort goes through before and after Agile ways of working. You'd hope for less of those once Agile improves interteam cooperation. 

You may have already noticed a pattern here. Regardless of what you're tracking to measure Agile's impact on your why, you'll need a baseline to start from. Take the time to assess your current state so you can accurately track the impact of your transformation on your why. 

How you reteam

As part of an Agile transformation, we often need to reteam. Moving people into different team structures can be stressful and shouldn't be undertaken lightly. 

Make sure everyone understands how you expect team structure to contribute to achieving your why. They're far more likely to embrace the change if they know it'll keep them out of review meetings, increase the impact of their work, or take useless busywork off their to-do list. 

If you position reteaming as something that's happening just so we can "be more Agile," you're setting yourself up for resistance. 

Your why also influences the way you put these new teams together. If collaboration and/or alignment is a big part of your why, working hard to create fully cross-functional teams will be crucial to achieving it. Speed to market, on the other hand, may not demand true cross-functionality if you can divide and conquer the work using your existing team structures. 

Which frameworks you try

Only here at the end of this discussion am I bringing up specific practices of Agile, and that's quite deliberate. Leaders need to spend a lot of time grappling with the why and creating communications based on it before diving into the day to day doing of Agile. 

But, once you're at this point, your why should still come into play. Teams looking for speed to market should consider carefully whether iterative timeboxes, a la Scrum, will help them deliver value faster. In many marketing teams I've coached, flow-based frameworks like Kanban are in fact more effective at increasing their output. Often a hybrid, like the Rimarketing framework I outline in my new book, is the right option. 

Likewise, teams striving for better alignment to goals and better collaboration should consider what meetings, practices and roles are likely to help them deliver on their why. 

This critical look at frameworks from the point of view of your ultimate objective for Agile will get you far better outcomes than just picking a framework off a Google search. 

Managing change by starting with why

Agile is a team sport. Sell your Agile transformation up, down and sideways by focusing on what it gets for everyone involved. Position Agile as a solution to a specific problem, not a panacea for everything that's wrong with your processes. Socialize your results, comparing them against your baseline metrics, to show where the expected outputs are showing up and how you plan to get even better over time. 

Above all, remember that "to be Agile" is not a good reason alone to start an Agile transformation. 

10 Ways Businesses Can Put Downtime to Good Use

Posted: 21 Jan 2021 09:00 AM PST

When COVID-19 first became a buzzword and governments first started shutting down businesses, everyone talked about how much time they would save by working from home – without a daily commute or constant interruptions by co-workers.

And it's true, employees and business owners alike are finding more hours in the day since telework and down-to-business virtual meetings have become the norm.

But instead of filling our found time with cooking lessons or family game nights, we're simply doing more work. A study from Stanford University revealed that employees spend more than a third of their former commuting time on their primary jobs.

Perhaps your business (and your employees) could benefit from being productive in ways that are not as routine as cramming more work into an already busy day. Here are 10 ways businesses can make the best use of their downtime during the pandemic:

100 days

Follow the lead of incoming U.S. presidents, and spend some time planning the first 100 days of the new year. Choose a set of reasonable, doable goals. Create action items, deadlines and rewards for achieving them. Focus on what your business and employees could do differently or could add or improve rather than doing more of what they have always done.

Involve your employees in the planning, and you could reap some out-of-the-box ideas that only those on the front lines could have come up with.

Strategies

It used to be that employers would pack up the executive staff once or twice a year and shuttle them off to a remote location – perhaps in the mountains as the leaves were turning or on the beach when it was just a bit too chilly to be tempted by the sand and surf. There, they would strategize, brainstorm and refresh without the day-to-day distractions of a busy office.

These days, everyone is working remotely, and those traditional, in-person meetings have become futuristic. Why not enlist the help of a focus group leader to get the team together virtually and focus on planning, innovating, and making changes?

Sparkle

Even if your business relies on a cleaning service, some parts of the office never seem clean. Maybe certain equipment is too sensitive for ordinary cleaning products or some files are too private for the housekeeping staff to see.

Now that you have the time (and only your essential staff is physically at work), declare a day of spring cleaning. Pick up papers, shred the ones that aren't needed, clean the equipment, rearrange the furniture, fix whatever is broken.

Give your remote employees the day off to clean their home office stations as well. They probably set them up in a hurry – forced telework came as something of a surprise, after all. They could probably use some free time to organize, set up files, order missing equipment, and figure out a way to have quiet and privacy while working in a houseful of other teleworkers and remote learners.

Finally

What do you have the time to do now that you were putting off until you found the time? This is your opportunity.

Are you using outdated sales management software because you haven't gotten around to doing the research and placing the order? Order an upgrade and the training sessions that come with it now that you have some free time. Is your staff working on outdated desktop computers? Negotiate a good deal for state-of-the-art ones with your tech vendor.

Spending time now on building more efficiencies into your business can save time later when everyone gets back to the office.

Sales

You probably send your sales staff out to training sessions every so often to help keep them motivated and their skills up to date. But have you ever considered sending your entire staff to sales training?

The fact is that every job is a sales job, even though not every employee is called a salesperson. Consider the sales value of a receptionist who is courteous to clients and visitors, or of a help desk troubleshooter (or repair shop tech) who finishes every client job with the question, "What other repairs can we schedule for you?"

If you teach sales strategies to your non-sales employees, they are more likely to recognize – and act on – an opportunity to sell when it's right in front of them. And they will feel empowered and prepared to grab that opportunity and make the sale, or at least get the potential customer in front of someone who can.

Boredom

Telecommuters put in fewer hours of hard work most days than employees who spend their days in a workspace outside of their homes, according to a Wall Street Journal report. But instead of pressuring them to hunker down, business owners might encourage them to embrace their downtime – to the point of doing nothing, at least in small doses.

It turns out that boredom is good for innovation. In a 2017 TED Talk, speaker and podcast host Manoush Zomorodi revealed that a bored brain often defaults to creative problem-solving.

 

Ask employees to jot down the ideas they come up with when they daydream or space out for a while during the workday. It could lead to innovative ideas that will save (or make) your company some money.

School

What have you always wanted to learn about but never got around to it? Do you lack a particular skill that you believe would make you a more successful entrepreneur or bring more money into your business?

Taking college classes, earning a certification, and attending industry conferences takes much less time and money than it used to now that those educational opportunities are online. You can skip the travel time and hotel bills and simply tune in while sitting at your kitchen table, or in your empty storefront.

Offering employees the opportunity and paying for them to brush up on skills and learn new ones can get their creative juices flowing, and it can bring unlimited new ideas and enthusiasm into your workplace.

Budget

In the rush of business, business owners may not pay as much attention to cash flow as they should. Make a point of devoting some of your downtime to scouring your books.

If your business has taken a hit, a long, hard look at the books can help you discover where you can cut spending and what marginally profitable products or services you can cut loose. You might also get a glimpse at revenue trends that you never noticed before but that you might be able to capitalize on in the future.

Becoming hyperaware of every dollar in and dollar out also could help you create a realistic budget for the lean times. And it could make you more confident about moving forward because you understand exactly what you can – and should – spend.

Brand

Products, services and businesses always have a brand, something customers and the public know them by, like their logo and their reputation for customer service. The business owner, as an individual, needs a brand as well.

What's your personal brand? Don't answer that. Instead, ask your customers, vendors and employees to answer it for you.

We often believe we give one impression when we actually give another. We try to personify a brand that doesn't suit us. If you're a shy person, but you want your brand to be viewed as outgoing, confident and in charge, you'll have a hard time pulling that off. If you're a formal, by-the-book kind of business owner, but you want people to see you as casual, flexible, and easygoing, that's not sustainable.

Spend some of your downtime taking a realistic look at your strengths. Then, leverage them into a brand that you can wear effortlessly, consistently and proudly.

Reach

The last thing your regular customers will expect when they're not ordering from your business or coming around to see you is a friendly phone call. Surprise them by reaching out just to say hi.

If their businesses are sluggish, too, they might not be in a position to buy anything from you. Don't make this an overt sales call. Instead, just tell customers you're checking in to ask if they're OK and to shoot the breeze.

People can get lonely when they're working from home all day or spending time at their empty offices and storefronts. A call from someone from the same industry who understands the business and is largely in the same circumstance financially and saleswise is likely to be a very welcome gesture.

Touching base with your customers when they're not in a position to buy is not just kind and friendly. It's a gesture that could translate into customer loyalty, gratitude and future sales.

No company owner wants business to be slow. But when it is, you can make the most of it by making your downtime productive, planning for the future and being creative in a way that you and your staff rarely have the time to do.

 

 

What Is the IRS Mileage Deduction?

Posted: 21 Jan 2021 05:30 AM PST

There are dozens of business tax deductions in the U.S. tax code covering a litany of subjects and situations regarding everyday operations. One such deduction that's seen significant changes in recent years is the standard mileage tax deduction. Although your employees will likely track their own mileage over the course of a tax year, your role as a small business owner is important in claiming this deduction as well.

What is the IRS' mileage deduction?

Before 2018, if your business required the use of a personal car for business reasons, or if it owned and operated its own fleet of vehicles for business use only, the associated costs of operating those vehicles could be deducted at a reduced rate. That deduction used to stem solely from the employee, but the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 (TCJA) introduced changes regarding itemized deductions for certain unreimbursed business expenses, including mileage.

According to the IRS, the deduction used to be aimed at easing the burden of footing the "entire cost of ownership and operation" of a vehicle if used only for business purposes. Now, the stipulations that surround the deduction are far more focused, with lawmakers deciding in 2017 that only self-employed individuals would be eligible to deduct business mileage. Individual taxpayers, however, may deduct mileage traveled for medical appointments and while volunteering for a nonprofit.

Previously, moving expenses in relation to a job were also deductible, but the TCJA made that deduction available only to active-duty military members who are forced to move because of a change in their deployment.

According to the IRS' latest table of standard mileage rates, the mileage rates for 2021 are 56 cents per mile for business, 14 cents per mile for charity and 16 cents per mile for medical or moving.

"The standard mileage rate for business use is based on an annual study of the fixed and variable costs of operating an automobile," according to a statement released by the IRS in December 2019. "The rate for medical and moving purposes is based on the variable costs."

It's important to note that the TCJA is effective only through 2025, at which point Congress will determine whether it should be renewed.

Who tracks an employee's mileage?

As a small business owner, you may be interested in keeping track of your employees' mileage data, but you won't have any reason to do so as it pertains to tax deductions. According to Rafael Alvarez, CEO and founder of ATAX, the burden of tracking and calculating an individual's mileage for tax purposes falls upon the employee, but that doesn't mean the employer is completely out of the picture.

"Traditionally, employers do not get involved in tracking mileage for their employees," he said. However, "there are some employers that, because of the nature of their business, keep track of their employees' mileage using applications that can track the mileage from point A to point B, including the day and time."

Employees who intend to deduct mileage will have to keep detailed records of their travels, with exact totals from point A to point B, and the date of each trip. According to Alvarez, employers that use mileage-tracking apps can provide their employees with a report.

"Employers can provide a report to their employees who are required to visit clients, make deliveries and travel in business-related activities," he said. The report also shows the day, time and mileage traveled.

In most instances, a business owner's decision to track employee mileage data depends on whether the company provides mileage reimbursement. If the employer reimburses employees, the employees will provide mileage information to the employer. However, Alvarez noted that there are apps that are very easy to use in conjunction with a tracker installed in a vehicle. Popular mileage tracking apps include MileIQ, Hurdlr, Stride and Triplog. Other options include more robust GPS fleet tracking applications.

Many taxpayers like to use mileage data from applications such as Google Maps and MapQuest. However, Alvarez warned against doing that, because these sites may not be the most accurate tools for the job.

"From personal experience, I can say that IRS tax auditors do not want to use a mileage log from any of these applications," he said. "The reason is that the mileage listed is an approximation, and the IRS auditor prefers accurate mileage."

How should employers handle mileage deductions?

As a business owner, if you use your car strictly for business purposes, you can deduct vehicle expenses on your tax return. Employees and business owners who use their car for personal and business reasons must split the expenses for a potential deduction.

What is the difference between standard mileage and actual expense deductions?

According to the IRS, there are two methods for determining eligible vehicle expenses. Along with using the aforementioned standard mileage rate, small business owners can determine their vehicle expenses by calculating the following costs:

  • Depreciation of the vehicle
  • Lease payments
  • Gas and oil
  • Tires
  • Repairs and tune-ups
  • Insurance
  • Registration fees

Although there are two options for calculating how much to deduct, the IRS does not allow taxpayers to claim both deductions. To maximize how much they can deduct, the taxpayer or small business owner will have to calculate which deduction yields the highest return.

To calculate the deduction based on the standard mileage rate, multiply the total business-related miles traveled by the mileage rate, which is 56 cents per mile for the 2021 tax period. So, if a person traveled 500 miles for business-related needs in the 2021 tax year, their deduction would be $280.

Itemized expense deductions, however, require meticulous recordkeeping; to calculate the deduction, you will have to rely on receipts for the costs mentioned above.

How do you claim mileage deductions?

Prior to the TCJA, taxpayers who filed as employees claimed their mileage on Schedule A using IRS Form 2106, while self-employed individuals filed on Schedule C. Although the TCJA eliminated the mileage tax deduction as an itemized deduction for most taxpayers, self-employed individuals can still claim their mileage on Schedule C at 56 cents per mile for 2021.

Can Employers Require Employees to Get the COVID Vaccine?

Posted: 21 Jan 2021 04:00 AM PST

As COVID-19 vaccine distribution ramps up, small business owners – especially those operating in a high-risk environment – may be wondering what their rights are for requiring employees to get the vaccine. To keep your workplace safe and compliant, it is important to understand what the COVID-19 vaccine is and what your legal rights are for mandating it when it is widely available.

What is the COVID-19 vaccine?

There are currently two COVID-19 vaccines authorized for emergency use in the United States: the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine and the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine.

As the coronavirus vaccine becomes readily available to the wider population in the coming months, employers must decide whether to encourage their employees to get the vaccine or to outright require it.

Editor's note: Seeking other resources to navigate your small business through the coronavirus pandemic? Visit our COVID-19 business resources hub.

COVID-19 vaccine and employers' rights

When the COVID-19 vaccine is widely available, private employers can legally require at-will employees to get vaccinated as a condition of employment. According to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), employers may even require employees to show proof of vaccination, but employers may want to warn employees not to include any medical information in that proof.

Requiring the vaccine

Although it is legal to require employees to get the vaccine, there are a few labor and employment laws you need to consider. For example, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (Title VII) makes it illegal for an employer to discriminate against an applicant or employee based on their race, color, religion, sex and national origin. Consequently, employers that require coronavirus vaccination as a condition of employment must provide reasonable accommodations for employees with particular religious beliefs, practices or observances that prevent them from getting the vaccine.

According to Andrew Zelman, partner and employment law expert at Berger Singerman, protections are also afforded for employees with certain disabilities or medical conditions that would prohibit them from participating in an otherwise mandatory vaccination program. 

"An employer met with an objection to a vaccine by an employee claiming a medical condition may not inquire further into the details of the condition other than potentially requiring a notice from a medical professional, or risk violating the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA)," Zelman told business.com.

Additionally, unless the government passes a law that gives civil immunity to employers implementing mandatory vaccinations, employers are susceptible to the risks of litigation and employee backlash.

Administering the vaccine

Employers must be wary of violating the ADA if they choose to host the distribution of the vaccine themselves, as the ADA has stipulations regarding disability-related inquiries.

"If the employer administers the vaccine, similar to how many employers offer an annual flu vaccine through company insurance, the prescreening questions to the employee must be 'job-related and consistent with business necessity,'" Zelman said.

COVID-19 vaccine and employees' rights

Some employees may be hesitant to get the COVID-19 vaccine and prefer to work from home instead. So, if an employer decides to make COVID-19 vaccination a requirement of employment, do employees have the right to continue working remotely instead?

It depends. There are a few scenarios that afford employees the ability to forgo mandatory vaccination and work remotely instead, but these situations are based largely on the employee's underlying justification for wanting to work remotely.

Employee exemptions

If an employee falls under one of the aforementioned exemptions, working from home may be considered a reasonable accommodation and could, therefore, be allowed. Employers may be able to request supporting documentation for why the employee needs the accommodation (e.g., religious exemption, medical exemption), but employers should avoid requesting any protected information (e.g., details about a disability).

If the employer chooses to rely solely on employee vaccination and fails to implement other health and safety measures recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to prevent the spread of the coronavirus in the workplace, telecommuting may be considered justifiable. Employers must take all of the proper precautions in maintaining a safe and healthy work environment.

"If the reason for the [telecommuting] request and the feeling of not being comfortable in the workplace is based upon a general belief that COVID-19 is omnipresent without any subjective issues with the employer's workplace, then the employer has discretion to afford continued teleworking, provided the decision is made, so as not to discriminate against other similarly situated employees," Zelman said.

Employee vaccination information

Employees may believe it is their legal right to know if their colleagues have contracted the virus or received the vaccine, but this is false. In fact, Jay Kelley, managing partner at Elk & Elk Co., said employees "have a right to not have their personal medical information disclosed to others.

"Notably, however, if an employer does make this notification, the individual cannot be identified, due to Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) and ADA privacy protections," Kelley said. "This would apply to information regarding who has or has not received the vaccine or has [presumed] immunity from having had the virus in the past."

Who should require mandatory vaccinations?

Just because you can make COVID-19 vaccination mandatory in the workplace doesn't mean you should. Requiring vaccination can have a negative impact on company morale, it may be administratively difficult to implement company-wide and it may have legal ramifications.

Most employers are better off educating and encouraging employees to get vaccinated, rather than making it mandatory. Employers should also be implementing other health and safety measures, like social distancing, mask wearing and proper sanitization.

That said, there are a few industries that could benefit from requiring employees to get vaccinated. 

"Elderly or medically immunocompromised clients would be dramatically benefited by mandatory vaccinations," Kelley said. "Additionally, businesses with employees who are required to engage in a significant amount of travel could benefit from having their traveling staff vaccinated."

What to consider when deciding whether to require mandatory COVID-19 vaccination

There are several things to consider when deciding whether to require employees to get the COVID-19 vaccine when it is available to them. Every business is unique, and the laws are constantly evolving – so be sure to evaluate your situation thoroughly and follow any current guidelines, laws or regulations.

When deciding on mandatory vaccinations, ask yourself the following questions:

  • What are the benefits of requiring vaccination? Having a workforce that's better protected against COVID-19 is ideal for improving productivity and maintaining compliance with Occupational Safety and Health Administration.

  • What are the limitations or implications of requiring vaccination? Implementing a company-wide vaccination requirement can cause several problems; it is a huge undertaking that can cause administrative and compliance issues.

  • Is requiring vaccination necessary? Industries and organizations at high risk for coronavirus exposure or those that work with high-risk individuals may benefit from mandatory vaccination policies. Assess whether vaccination is necessary for your business or if you can seek an alternative. For example, Zelman said, many employers may benefit from following the flu-shot model instead.

In other words, you might "encourage participation through education (information on the importance of receiving the inoculation), convenience (by hosting the administering of the shots and/or reimbursing employees for their visit to a test site) and cost elimination (by sponsoring the testing for the employee)," Zelman said.
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