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Double-jabbed HR nightmare ahead?

ended 14. August 2021

Newspager Sarah Loates says the ‘jabbed versus not jabbed’ debate is a massive HR nightmare that is already starting to unfold on the front line of business, e.g. jabbed employees refusing to work with those not jabbed, and the ‘not jabbed’ seeing their jabbed colleagues as a risk to them.

Sarah says the whole thing is made so complex because it's underpinned by different protected characteristics, e.g. pregnancy or fertility, religion (if the jab has gelatine products), disability (if you have an auto-immune disease,) age (if you are under 17) — and on top of that ANY employee can automatically claim unfair dismissal with no qualifying period if they think their workplace places them in clear and imminent danger and their employee does not take steps. 

In short, is there a massive HR headache ahead? 

3 responses from the Newspage community

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Sarah Loates
Director at Loates HR Consultancy
"Based on the initial skirmishes we've had to deal with over the past few weeks, the jabbed versus not jabbed battle is going to wreak havoc for employers in every sector and in every corner of the UK. "Employers are sleep walking into a perilous phase of the pandemic. The operational fall-out could last for years to come. "Balancing diametrically opposed perspectives, and individual rights, is already proving a nightmare for employers and that nightmare, for now at least, has no end in sight.”
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Helen Llewellyn
Director at Infinity Wellbeing
"An HR headache of 8.5 on the Richter scale is coming. It will be fascinating to see what Government guidance emerges, test cases happen or laws come into play. The extent of the issues ahead, which the Government is still wildly unaware of, could even be an excuse to mandate vaccines by law."
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Louise Burns
Company Director at Nineteen Recruitment
"Jabbed or not jabbed is a sensitive and challenging situation to navigate as an employer. Personally, I feel I have a responsibility to not only protect my employees' health and safety, but to respect their decisions, beliefs and wishes. "If I have to continue to use strategies inside the workplace to both protect staff health and their choices on the vaccine, then I will. I shall continue with social distancing and the other strategies we have had in place to manage the risk of Covid-19, which allows my staff to make their own choices with regards to the vaccine while keeping others as safe as possible. I don't believe that I have any right to insist anyone accepts the vaccine. People have their own reasons for their decision and I have to respect them."