Posted on 11/09/2022 2:32:31 PM PST by nickcarraway
The company I work for has weathered the pandemic okay. We’re a 100% in person, small U.S. manufacturing company. I’m HR, finance, many other things, and sometimes reception. Because of that, I’m in a unique position to know the vaccination status of all visitors (due to a Covid screening form they complete) and some details about health status for employees and their family members.
Until recently, all employees have been fully vaccinated (to the best of my knowledge). There is no “vaccines required” policy; any mention of that in the past has been shot down by management. It’s been hypothetical given everyone’s vaccination status, plus the owners aren’t keen on mandates. There is no longer a masking requirement at work, though people are free to wear them.
Recently we hired someone who is not Covid-vaccinated, according to their visitor info form. I shared that info with the person conducting the interview, now their direct manager, since he’d be meeting with him in the conference room. The new employee is working in a large, open manufacturing area and is almost always working at a bench on his own, so keeping distanced wasn’t a problem. However, work stations just got moved around. He’s now at a work station that directly faces the work station of someone who lives with a medically vulnerable family member, who is at risk of serious illness from even minor infections. When they are both at their work stations, they face each other, six feet apart.
Ethically, to me, the employee with the vulnerable family member needs to know they are working every day with someone who is unvaccinated, so that they can choose to mask up, change their work station placement, etc. But that would be disclosing medical info about a coworker, which normally I wouldn’t do. Though it shouldn’t figure into the decision about “the right thing to do,” complicating matters, the new guy’s role is one with some overlap of the existing employee’s role and the existing employee had their hackles up about the position even existing, felt threatened, and gave the new guy the cold shoulder for a couple of days.
As HR, and personally, I’m very cautious about Covid: still masking in public and avoiding crowds. At work I’m the person who reminds people about eye protection, safety gloves, etc. if I observe someone doing something that requires that. I’m lightly teased about about my focus on caution and safety. So though I’m willing to use my capital as needed to address this issue, I also suspect the owners and the manager involved might not share my level of concern over it (particularly given that they moved the one unvaccinated person to face — all day — the one person they know has an at-risk family member).
My initial impulse was to simply talk to the employee with the vulnerable family member, let him decide how he wants to proceed (by masking up, asking to move his work station, etc.). I could be vague about who, exactly, is not vaccinated … but he will likely see through that. Also, there may be other employees with similarly at-risk family members who I’m not aware of.
Any suggestions how I should proceed in this situation?
Agggh.
Morally, I’d argue that you should be able to tell the person with the at-risk family member that he’s facing an unvaxxed person all day long so he can take additional precautions if he wants to (like masking if he’s not been doing that).
But legally, you can’t share employees’ confidential medical info, which the EEOC says includes vaccination status.
Ideally, everyone in your workplace would assume that they don’t know other people’s vax status and just take whatever precautions they’d take if they knew for sure that someone was unvaxxed. And really, this is what everyone should be doing in situations where they don’t know the people around them very well. For some people, that won’t mean changing anything — they’ve decided being vaccinated themselves is enough. For other people, it will mean masking and/or other precautions.
However, if in the past your employees were told everyone there was vaccinated, you’ve got people operating with out-of-date information. Given that, it makes sense to remind everyone that the company doesn’t require vaccination and doesn’t share people’s vaccination status, and so if they are concerned about protecting themselves or high-risk family members, the company supports them in taking safety precautions like masking and adding more distance between work stations.
You could also ask the employee with the vulnerable family member if he’d prefer a work station with more distance around it — as a general safety precaution, not one specific to the person he’s near right now. If he’s not masking all day, that’s a good idea anyway since vaccination — while highly effective at preventing serious disease and death — doesn’t fully prevent infection, so his family member’s risk isn’t just from the unvaccinated new guy. In fact, this is worth offering to all employees if you can since, as you note, you don’t know who else might have at-risk loved ones they’d like to protect (or be at risk themselves).
I don’t care at this point whether or not someone got the jab.
HIPAA - It’s nobody else’s “need to know”.
It’s a HIPPA violation if you do.
The person asking the question and the other answering are both morons.
People can’t let go of “vaccination will stop the spread”. So stupid.
At this point the company apparently only had one employer who had a vocabulary beyond the word “baaa. Baaaaa”
First ask yourself, how much of a lawsuit can you afford? Disclosing an employee’s medical conditions to an unauthorized employee is likely to result in a lawsuit.
“Should I tell an employee that the new hire sitting right across from him all day is unvaccinated?”
$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
No, but you can tell the new employee that he’s a dumbass zombie lemming if he does submit to the untested gene therapy.
Tell him I’ll come and personally sing an extra verse of Amazing Grace at his funeral if he does take the jab.
If the poison vax was the magic shield that its proponents claim it is, people who got injected with the poison vax could cuddle with people who didn’t get the poison vax, and it wouldn’t matter.
Somebody needs to tell Karen to stuff it up.
I care. I don’t want the vaccinated shedding that crap off on me.
Should you tell him/her the person behind them in the supermarket after work is not vaxxed either?
Substitute HIV+ for “unvaccinated” and see how the media would react.
Ms. Busybody apparently somehow missed the memo from Pfizer, etc., about the jabs not reducing infection or transmission, but leading to degraded immune systems with more yucky stuff all around.
She also knows her employers wouldn’t approve of her misinformed and illegal busy-bodying or she would have simply asked them about it.
It’ sbetween them and their doctor, not obnoxious HR Karens.
Don’t post stupid articles.
Fire the vaxx’d employee for being dumb.
Give the new guy a raise.
Next question.
You think it’s stupid for people to care what’s going on out there, and to stick up for their rights.
This HR person should hit the road.
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