The ethics of encouraging employees to get the COVID-19 vaccination

Abstract

The coronavirus pandemic continues to hinder the ability of businesses to operate at full capacity. Vaccination offers a path for employees to return to work, and for businesses to resume full capacity, while protecting themselves, their fellow workers, and customers. Many employers reluctant to mandate vaccination for their employees are considering other ways to increase employee vaccination rates. Because much has been written about the ethics of vaccine mandates, we examine a related and less discussed topic: the ethics of encouragement strategies aimed at overcoming vaccine reluctance (which can be due to resistance, hesitance, misinformation, or inertia) to facilitate voluntary employee vaccination. While employment-based vaccine encouragement may raise privacy and autonomy concerns, and though some employers might hesitate to encourage employees to get vaccinated, our analysis suggests ethically acceptable ways to inform, encourage, strongly encourage, incentivize, and even subtly pressure employees to get vaccinated.