The question facing many employers and managers is whether employees need to be vaccinated or not. For some, the choice has been removed. Workers whose vaccinations are mandated under the Covid-19 Public Health Response (Vaccinations) Order 2021 must comply with the order or risk losing their jobs. Organisations that require customers to produce vaccination certificates under the Covid- 19 Protection Framework must have their workers vaccinated.

The next question is which workers must be vaccinated. Not all workers in a mandated organisation have the same risk of exposure to the virus. Employers and managers should use a risk assessment to determine who needs to be vaccinated. The risk assessment should look at the increased risk of exposure from work compared to life out of work.

There are many times that health and safety and human resources (HR) interact. This is one of those times. Consult with your HR and health and safety advisors. The basic guidelines, vital for undertaking the risk assessment, are to involve the relevant workers and to do the risk assessment for a role or position, not for an individual. For example, the delivery driver of one organisation may have a high risk of exposure to customers, while another may only see one person. Extrapolate that and consider the co-workers. What risk do they have, based on the amount of exposure they have to the driver?

The government has also put in place a way to terminate employment for workers who refuse to be vaccinated. Workers can be given a minimum of four weeks’ notice if they cannot fulfil a role that does not require them to be vaccinated. Again, HR should be involved in this.

This information is correct at the time of writing. There are rapid changes in the government’s Covid-19 response, so some details may have changed when you read this. Please see government websites for detailed information – covid.19. govt.nz, health.govt.nz, worksafe.govt.nz and business.govt.nz. Safewise will update the Covid-19 page on its website as often as possible.