New Covid policy is boosting worker vaccinations: Delta Air

Bloomberg

Delta Air Lines Inc said a fifth of its unvaccinated employees received a Covid-19 shot in the two weeks since the airline announced that they would be subject to a $200 monthly surcharge, providing support for companies that are hesitant to impose mandates.
The carrier also hasn’t seen a rise in employee turnover, Chief Health Officer Henry Ting said at a media briefing. Delta’s employee vaccination rate has increased to 78% from 74% since it became the first major US employer to levy a penalty. Separately, new data from the
Society for Human Resource Management found that employees might threaten to quit over a mandate but haven’t really done so thus far.
The findings come as President Joe Biden prepares to announce a vaccine mandate for all executive-branch employees and federal contractors, part of a broader push to quell the pandemic, according to a person familiar with the plan. That move, plus the full approval of Pfizer Inc’s vaccine last month, has spurred many companies to consider mandates of their own.
Still, corporate vaccine policies vary widely, Bloomberg found, with about half of more than 100 companies saying they have a mandate in place for at least some staff. It’s often only for office workers rather than frontline staff.
Delta’s health chief said about half of its 80,000 employees rushed to get the vaccine as soon as it was available, but about 20,000 held out. Most of the unvaccinated “are those who are on the fence,” Ting said, while there is a smaller group of people “who simply don’t want to be told what to do.”
The airline has seen no increase in resignations because of its surcharge, he said. That’s in line with a new survey
of human-resources professionals that found that less than 2% have witnessed employee resignations over the need to be vaccinated and other Covid policies.