Provo-based customer experience company Qualtrics has created a solution for businesses to track verification of COVID-19 vaccination or negative testing in the event Pres. Joe Biden’s mandate testing/vaccination mandate takes effect. Biden has announced an initiative for companies of 100 employees or more to require their employees to either be vaccinated or get tested for COVID-19 regularly as part of his aggressive plan to reduce the number of unvaccinated people nationwide. As part of the plan, millions of federal workers and government contractors will need to provide proof of vaccination with no test-out option.
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration has not yet published the emergency temporary standard that would put this requirement into effect as requested by Biden. But businesses can expect that the “deadline for compliance will be aggressive,” said Sydney Heimbrock, chief industry advisor for government at Qualtrics.
According to a recent Qualtrics study, 40 percent of workers are either ambivalent or against the mandate. Many local governmental officials have also vowed to fight the mandates, so implementation of the rules may be delayed. Qualtrics found a quarter of the employees surveyed said they would quit their job and go work elsewhere because of the mandates.
With Biden’s mandates, businesses will have “shift from whether they’re going to mandate vaccinations to how they’re going to,” Heimbrock said. And that involves thinking about how to make the process of reporting and providing proof as seamless and painless as possible — problems that the new Qualtrics product addresses.
