One in four Australian employers want to mandate COVID vaccinations for some or all of their employees, according to the results of a new survey.

The Ai Group survey also found that more than 50 per cent of companies are in favour of some form of mandating.

Of the over 700 companies surveyed, 24 per cent said they would like to mandate COVID vaccinations for some or all of their employees; and 27 per cent said they would only like COVID vaccination to be mandated through a health order related to their industry.

A further 37 per cent said they will ‘offer and encourage optional COVID vaccines’ while the remaining 10 per cent were unsure or said it was not applicable to their workplaces.

Ai Group Chief Executive, Innes Willox, said businesses were closely watching those already moving in this direction and assessing what approaches and circumstances will be considered lawful and reasonable.

“The group that favours health orders being in place no doubt would prefer the legal certainty that comes with such orders. However, governments do not appear to favour any significant expansion of the small number of such health orders now in place,” Mr Willox said.

“For employers, the question of whether or not to mandate has a long tail. Employers will initially look at the issue from the perspective of how they can protect their staff and their customers. As more businesses mandate vaccination, the question will shift to whether they will need to mandate vaccination for their own staff who visit businesses that have a mandate in place.”

Willox said there was also complexities for labour-hire companies sending workers all over the country and for group training companies sending their apprentices into businesses that may mandate vaccination.

“The message for policymakers is that despite the red herring put around in recent days that health orders are the only way to go for mandating COVID vaccinations, there are a large number of employers ready to use longstanding legal rights to introduce mandating where lawful and reasonable,” Mr Willox said.

Meanwhile, icare NSW has sought to clarify the circumstances where workers who suffer adverse reactions to COVID-19 vaccines could be eligible for workers’ compensation.

According to icare, a worker’s employment must be a substantial or main contributing factor to the injury or illness for it to be covered.

“While each claim needs to be assessed on its own evidence, several factors may increase the likelihood that a vaccine injury is covered under workers compensation,” icare says.

These include whether an employer:

• Took steps to arrange for its employees to be administered a COVID-19 vaccine.
• Had encouraged or induced its employees to get vaccinated in order to obtain benefits for its business.
• Permitted or directed employees to have a COVID-19 vaccination during ordinary working hours, or
• Had provided instructions to employees relating to the administration of the vaccine.

“The link between the vaccine injury and the worker’s employment is easier to establish where a worker is influenced by their employer’s requirement to get vaccinated or is subject to a NSW Government public health order,” icare says.

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