Most Americans don't want to return to the office unless their employers require the vaccine for all workers
- Over 60% of US adults say employers should mandate the COVID-19 vaccine, a new survey found.
- Overall, workers say they're concerned about the safety risks of reopening offices.
- Employers nationwide are said to be mulling mandatory vaccination policies for their workers.
Most US adults want their employers to make the COVID-19 vaccine mandatory in order to return to the office, a new survey found.
Workplace technology firm Envoy conducted a survey of 1,000 full- and part-time workers in the US about returning to the workplace in order to gauge employee sentiment one year after the start of the pandemic. The survey found that most adults are concerned about the health and safety risks of reopening offices, but are also hoping to return to work at least a few days per week.
In order to do so, however, most say they want their coworkers to be vaccinated: 62% said they feel companies should require employees to get the vaccine before they're allowed to report to work in person.
That statistic is higher among those who work in technology and business services, with 76% saying vaccines should be mandatory for office workers.
Overall, workers say they're concerned about their health at work. Most of the employees surveyed, or 66%, said they're worried about compromising their health and safety by returning to the office, which is even higher among people of color and Gen Z: 78% and 75%, respectively, are fearful about the risks to their health.
And as vaccinations rise nationwide, it could cause some employers to relax safety measures at the office, which is top of mind for most of the workers surveyed: 61% said they're concerned that their workplaces will ease COVID-19 restrictions too quickly.
These findings come as many corporations mull a mandatory vaccine policy. The Financial Times reported last month that some top UK firms are considering "no jab, no job" employment contracts before their employees can come back to work. Some companies have already enacted the policy for all employees, while others are considering a mandatory vaccine policy for any new workers.
In the US, employers are open to requiring vaccines. A poll of 150 current and recent CEOs conducted at the Yale Chief Executive Leadership Institute's virtual summit in December found that 72% were open to the idea, including executives from Walmart, Goldman Sachs, and UPS.
A poll of 150 C-Suite executives conducted in January found a similar sentiment, with about half of respondents saying they would make vaccines mandatory before their employees could come back to the office.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation's leading infectious disease expert, said earlier this year that he's certain many institutions will require vaccines, like hospitals, schools, and companies.
"I'm not sure [the vaccine is] going to be mandatory from a central government standpoint, like federal government mandates," he said. "But there are going to be individual institutions that I'm sure are going to mandate it."
Employers can legally require their staff to get vaccinated as long as employers don't seek information about a worker's health status, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission said last year. Employers cannot, however, conduct medical exams, including antibody testing.
President Joe Biden announced last week that the US will have enough vaccine doses for every American adult by May 1 and that he hopes to return to some sense of normalcy by July 4. As of Monday, 71 million Americans have received at least one vaccine dose, or about 21% of the population, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.