A survey found that found most employers, 90%, believe it will be somewhat or very challenging to implement the Biden mandate that employers with 100 or more workers require them to be vaccinated against COVID-19 or undergo weekly testing.
Conducted by the Society for Human Resource Management in late September, it also found that 80% of human resources professionals polled are concerned about the time needed for enforcing or tracking employee vaccination and test status.
Two in five, or 38%, of those organizations cited retaining talent as the most challenging impact of the mandate and 89% believed some employees will quit their jobs due to the new requirements.
In terms of costs, 65% claimed their organizations cannot afford to pay for regular testing for unvaccinated employees, SHRM reports.
Four out five organizations (82%) that meet the mandate criteria said the requirements will make maintaining the morale and engagement of their workforce more difficult.
In addition, 72% of those organizations also said the requirements will make maintaining regular business operations more difficult.
Nearly half (49%) said they are operating fully in-person, while 8% said they are operating on a fully remote schedule and 44% said they are operating via a hybrid of remote and in-person work.
Of the organizations that did not mandate the vaccine before Biden’s announcement and which do not meet the new criteria for the vaccine requirements, 86% said they are unlikely to require their employees get the vaccine.
SHRM’s research found that 60% of U.S. workers are supportive of the requirements, while 40% are unsupportive. Nearly 60% of US workers who are not fully vaccinated yet (59%) said they still are unlikely to get vaccinated (definitely/probably won't get vaccinated) even after the mandate.