To Fire or to Test More? That is the Question

To Fire or to Test More? That is the Question

It is unbelievable to me that many employers in the US and worldwide have, throughout the COVID-19 Pandemic, fired skilled employees in some misguided, costly move to show anti-vaccination employees who is the boss.

Why? Why lose difficult-to-replace employees? Why expose your enterprise to millions of dollars in liability payments for settlements (most often the case) or judgments? Why show such disloyalty to those employees??

Every other employee is watching how fairly you treat this set of unvaccinated employees, including those who, through the threat of firing, agreed to take the first round of vaccination but say no more.

Don’t get me wrong. Every other employee in the enterprise, facility, floor, or shift is scared for themselves and their families if their employer doesn’t do something “equivalent or nearly equivalent” to solve the problem and thereby dampen the risks. But is there a path that is “nearly” equivalent to firing non-compliant employees?

I say, “Yes.”??A resounding “Yes.”

Is there indeed a better way than firing employees to accomplish this task? Should employers have known and now know this and used or currently use it? Has it been reckless not to?

To me, the answer is obvious. Those employers have acted recklessly, and some are still acting recklessly.

Suppose an employee, for any reason, refuses to get vaccinated every three to six months. In that case, the employer should find a reasonable, alternative way to handle that situation instead of using the poor path of firing. So, again, balancing is required.?

To be intelligent, thoughtful, and fair for everyone having a significant stake in the outcome, from enterprise to employees to fellow workers to families to investors, employers must act differently than they have in the past.?

This requirement of proper balancing is especially so given that the half-life of today’s COVID-19 vaccinations is roughly three months, not 15 to 30 years like many have come to believe. They believe this because they naively want to believe it or because they read or watch extensive amounts of misinformation conveyed by statement or by omission.?

This shortcoming of current COVID-19 vaccines and boosters means that by the end of the third month following administration, the vaccination or booster is only half as effective in preventing infection and presumably spread to fellow workers. In other words, vaccination is a good but not a perfect solution. If an employer uses it, that use must be authenticated and adequately overseen and managed. And forced use is unfair, unethical, and illegal.

I believe my teammates and I have created a far less damaging solution all around to firing. It is an alternative way to “help” prevent (that is what vaccinations do; they “help” prevent) unvaccinated employees from bringing COVID-19 or its variants or sub-variants into the workspace, whether from home or otherwise. So, neither vaccinations nor their adequate alternative is perfect, but they are good.?

Both can significantly reduce the possibility that a specific employee can become infected. And the chance that the infected employee can expose fellow workers on that shift and possibly spread the virus and a significant number of infections like wildfire throughout their floor and facility or even from facility to facility. The result: killing or otherwise harming, physically, mentally, and financially, workers and families—and enterprises and jobs.

Vaccination is the best path for most employers unless future research says otherwise. The reasons for this finding are two.?

First, vaccination reduces the spreading capacity of the vaccinated employee. And second, vaccination also significantly reduces the chances that that employee will catch the disease. And if they do, the possible harm they receive in terms of lost workdays, hospitalization, long-term damage to the heart, lungs, and brain, or even death is reduced.?

These are the fundamental financial and social interests of every employer. Or they should be.

But if workers who don’t believe this or fear the possibility of even more severe and far more likely long-term harm from the vaccination, or for any reason, reasonable or not, refuse to be vaccinated, there is a suitable alternative. This alternative involves tightly authenticated, controlled, and managed weekly testing, tight oversight, quarantine, and testing of infected or exposed workers. And careful testing of their temporary replacements.?

This alternative might accomplish nearly the same level of protection for others with whom they work. So, thoughtful weekly, authenticated testing using a top brand test might do the trick.

But there is an obstacle to using this approach if the enterprise is large, say more than 500 employees. The complication, in most situations, is that frequent testing unavoidably becomes staggered. Proper, very accurate, staggered administration quickly becomes far more complex and stressful than unassisted humans can perform.?

So, what assistance do humans responsible for accomplishing this task 24/7, day in and day out, for the months and possibly years needed? I believe employers, from businesses to hospitals to schools to universities to government agencies, need a high-end digital solution.

With the help of my expert team, I have invented, developed, and recently launched just such a solution. And to put our money, time, and energy where our mouths are, we have invested millions of dollars in cash and in-kind in creating this high-end solution.

Again, employers cannot get away with firing employees in this situation. There are significant risks that the vaccination will fail initially or in three months or might cause long-term or permanent harm to the recipient. So, an employee resisting vaccination is acting reasonably, so long as they agree to comply with a reasonable alternative. Accordingly, an employer may not compel its workers to take those risks by threatening or creating the loos of their jobs if a fair and affordable option is readily available.??

But, also, again, don’t get me wrong. I am a strong proponent of vaccination for everyone—if there is no reasonable alternative in terms of all the costs, financial and other, under the totality of the circumstances.?

My teammates and my new, reasonable alternative, which is managed for employers by my team and me, from soup to nuts: from inspiration to insight to creation to installation to customization to operation to oversight to alarms, alerts, and trend assessments to action-recommendations to record-keeping to updates to upgrades, might be the fix for most employers.

If you might want to speak more about this solution, you can reach me at 617-680-3127 or?john.norris@safely2prosperity.com.

Best,

John

? 2022 Safely2Prosperity and John Norris, JD, MBA