My HR department is excellent, as I've stated here before. They have quite the juggling act keeping a diverse group of employees happy and productive. The two primary goals of a good HR department is to recruit and KEEP top talent and to keep the company out of court as much as possible. Lower level employees might see the HR department as an adversary with all their rules and (sometimes) silly initiatives but as a manager, I see their value. They've saved my bacon a number of times and during this government-initiated vaccine madness, they've quietly behind the scenes worked out reasonable exemptions for good employees who feel strongly against taking these shots (including myself).
A good HR department will do all they can to retain top talent and will fully support management's efforts to keep the company running during these turbulent times.
As far as you thinking the sentence "employees not wanting to return to the office without the assurance that their co-workers are all vaccinated as well." is a plant, I agree with you but there is another aspect to this as well.
There are certain employees in my own company who have gotten rather used to working at home and not having to go into the office. Not surprisingly, they tend to be our weaker employees. All our top performers are eager to come back to the office and during this whole time have had no problem visiting clients in person as needed and coming into the office on at least a semi-regular basis.
So now that we have announced a company wide "return to the office" policy in January, we do have some employees using the "only if everybody is vaccinated card."
Now my company has already granted exemptions to roughly 10% of our workforce but HR has decided that they will not disclose to employees who has been vaccinated and who has been exempted. Instead, they will consider everybody in compliance who has either been vaccinated or exempted. To do otherwise, would be to have about 10% of our employees (including myself) treated as lepers in the workplace, before forced to wear the "scarlet letter" so to speak.
I think that is an excellent move. Everybody back in the office in January and nobody's business whether or not your co-workers are vaccinated or exempted. If you feel that strongly about it, find another job. Or wear your damn mask at the office to your heart's content.
I've been working from home since my company first started requiring wearing masks. And I'm not going back until I don't have to wear a mask.
During this time, my personal and team productivity has been at record levels, and we are continuing to bring in more projects than ever.
The upshot is that not all who work from home are slackers.
So now that we have announced a company wide "return to the office" policy in January, we do have some employees using the "only if everybody is vaccinated card."
Now THAT is clever. Unprofessional, but clever.
Everybody back in the office in January and nobody's business whether or not your co-workers are vaccinated or exempted. If you feel that strongly about it, find another job. Or wear your damn mask at the office to your heart's content.
Now, I suspect (again, depending upon state and municipality rules) those who've taken the shots needn't wear masks - but some will stay masked out of fear - while those granted an exemption must mask-up. It still creates the possibility of "Mask=Scarlet A".
That said, your employer is to be commended for their policy of respecting people's conscience. Cynically, I feel many of the private sector (and maybe public sector, too) vaxx mandates are back-door RIF programs.