I'm a manager in a small company. Today I overheard one employee asking around his co-workers if they had been vaccinated against covid-19.
I took him aside and told him that's not appropriate to quiz other staff members on their health status. He claimed he has a right to know for his own safety.
I realise this is a contentious issue for many people but I'd rather not have this going on within the office.
How can I deal with this?
This isn't complicated and is only controversial because people are making it so; employees have the right to a safe working environment which includes potentially lethal airborne viruses, whether you agree or not. The question should not be, "What do I do about this employee who claims to want a safe working environment" but "What can I do to ensure that the people I'm managing ARE in a safe working environment."
This depends on your locale and regional laws.
In most locales, what you did was correct. Employees have no right to know each others' health information; in fact there are legal statutes in most locales which explicitly counteract this "right" (HIPAA in the USA and PHIPA in Canada, among others). That said, they also have the freedom to ask about it and the freedom to answer a question if asked (and also the freedom to not answer such a question if it makes them uncomfortable, or to question the premise of such a question, or any number of other such things).
If this employee was asking, and being belligerent if the question went unanswered or unanswered satisfactorily, then you did the right thing by reprimanding him. If he does not want to work alongside coworkers who are not vaccinated or do not want to disclose their vaccination status to him, that's his problem; he is free to quit the company if he so chooses (and the ramifications thereof, including lack of severance pay, unemployment insurance, and so on). If he becomes belligerent to you, along the lines of "we need to force everyone to get vaccinated" etc, then you can fire him for cause for insubordination or something of the kind ("this is not your problem or your business, now do your work; it's the company's business to ensure a safe workplace and we are, and that's all you need to know"); in this case the termination would be "for cause", which would also, in most locales I believe, forfeit the employee's right to severance pay and unemployment insurance (IANAL).
That said, if the employee was asking "out of curiosity" or "to make conversation" (which does not appear to be the case), then you acted wrongly. Employees should be free to discuss whatever they want, whenever they want (as long as it doesn't interfere with their work), and can share whatever they want. It's not your business to interfere. However, based on the question this does not appear to be what happened.
Working while a pandemic is ongoing is bound to create anxiety with some employees, whether you like it or not. And you will not be able to wish this away.
Meet the few influencers in the workforce, understand their concern, and work with your boss and company management to come up with a plan to address atleast some of their concerns. For example, announce that the company will be doing a "workplace risk assessment" and implementing guidelines as outlined by the WHO (or your country's government). (See Coronavirus disease (COVID-19): Health and safety in the workplace ).
Don't encourage any debate about vaccination, or politics, or the science - just listen, and make up the workplace rules according to your government's guidelines, and if somebody complains about it, tell them to take it up with their political representative and not waste your time on it.
Can you judge the social relationships in the team?
I work in a mid-sized company in Germany. The management asks everyone who comes into the office if they are vaccinated, recovered, or recently tested with a single box to check. No need (and no way) to specify which one applies.
The colleagues in the team debated if one should get vaccinated, if it was more or less risky to get AstraZeneca as soon as possible or BioNTech some weeks later, what the individual side effects were, if we got the digital certification in addition to the paper one, and what we think about the semi-lockdown measures. We gave each other a heads-up before vaccination in case someone would need some days off afterwards. Unless somebody was evasive (no way for me to know that ...), I know that we're all vaccinated, with light to moderate side effects. The free-wheeling debates make some attempt to avoid divisive political issues, at least while we are on the company premises, but vaccination was no divisive issue for us.
With members of other teams, or in writing/email, it would be "X is unexpectedly away for health reasons, we expect him or her back soon. Can I help you in the meantime or can it wait?"
You used the terms "asked" and "quizzed". I agree that it is not appropriate to pressure or pester a colleague for medical information. But if the team is comfortable with that degree of frankness, a gag order might not be a good idea either. I realize that management might be walking a tightrope here (where it comes to preventing a hostile work environment), but the best option might be to ask the other team member if he or she was uncomfortable with that line of questioning.
This will depend on the location.
For example, this is a very common question in my country (Sri Lanka).
Even Sri Lanka make Covid-19 vaccine certificates mandatory from Sept 15 to visit some public places
So even government make mandatary covid 19 vaccines to visit public places, most of our co-workers ask this question from other co-workers. But in most western countries, employees have no right to know each others' health information.So this depend on the location.
There's a lot of debate going on here, but everyone's avoiding one core issue:
You are a MANAGER. Your job is to implement policy, not set it.
Go to whomever IS in charge of setting policy, and ask for a written copy of the policy, and then DISTRIBUTE AND IMPLEMENT the policy. Handle policy violations as you would any other policy violation issue.
This is a very common problem in so many small companies: When an event occurs, everyone tries to develop new policies and procedures. This is the time when your EXISTING procedures need to be used. As the old axiom says, "Don't try to change horses in mid-stream."
I wouldn't say that someone has a right to know the health status of individual coworkers. Although they have a right to ask, as long as it's in a conversation where all participants are happy to talk about it, it's not causing animosity and they're not harassing anyone over it (and others have a right to decline to answer).
If he randomly goes around asking "Have you been vaccinated? Have you been vaccinated? Have you been vaccinated?", then you should tell him to stop that. If he wants to discuss this in a respectful consensual private conversations with people, he can do so, but randomly asking people that out of the blue would be crossing the line of what's appropriate workplace conduct. If he gets to a point of harassing people about it in public or private, then just treat that as any other form of harassment.
The above said, I would say they have the right to know whether some environment they frequent is protected from a deadly disease through widespread vaccination and/or testing.
I might even go one step further and say they have a right to work in such a protected environment, because no person should have to choose between their job and their health.
Although, even if you think COVID is practically harmless, I would still argue that they have the right to know whether an environment is protected so they can make an informed decision about their health. If they want to worry about COVID, it's their right to do so.
At least be upfront and clear with them about whether you're going to enforce vaccination or testing in any way, now or in the future, so they can decide whether to start looking for a new job, or to take any other steps they deem necessary to protect their health.
Note that the above is based on workplace etiquette and morality, not on what the law says.
Local laws may require employers to enforce vaccination or testing of employees, so do make sure to know what those laws are and to follow them.
The best method is to tell this employee that he is not allowed to ask personal medical questions as this harassment. If he needs to know the current protocols in place to protect the workplace, direct him to human resources and their memos. If HR has not been actively managing this, then you need to have a discussion with HR about this and that there needed to be policies put in place months ago.
You take them aside and tell that employee that it is unwise to ask for people's health status because this means that you have to continuously look if he/she is treating people differently because of information that is their right to keep private. Ask them to, for their own sake, stop. It doesn't have to be a formal reprimand, or something you report or write down, but this person is entering a slippery slope and you should warn them. If they continue to do so, alert your HR department.
They cannot treat any coworker differently (within reason, helping a disabled person through the door is nice and non-controversial) based on information about their health. What if he/she went around and asked if people had AIDS? Cancer? Are pregnant? Have hemorrhoids? Is taking hormone therapy drugs? It is the same as all those situations; strictly private and knowing about it is a liability for that person!
They cannot treat any coworker differently based on [their vaccination status] -> That's quite an assertion.
Commented
Sep 16, 2021 at 10:06
Your reaction was absolutely spot on and I applaud you for it.
Additionally, if an employee is scared for their safety from COVID they can themselves go and get vaccinated, so that should be sufficient for them to feel safe.
It is none of their business, however, to enquire about colleagues' vaccination status, nor is it relevant to their own health.
Edit: Since many brought that up: Yes, even if you are vaccinated you can still infect others with COVID. Hence I say it is irrelevant whether your colleague is vaccinated or not if you are truly scared. In any case it still remains advisable to keep distance when possible.
