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Poll: Corporate Leaders Worried Over Vaccine Mandate Implementation

Research also found that a majority of business leaders support President Biden’s vaccination order for companies with more than 100 employees.

A majority of corporate leaders support President Joe Biden’s vaccination mandate, but say they have concerns about their companies’ ability to implement it.

Such are the findings of a new survey from The Conference Board, a nonprofit nonpartisan think tank.

The survey polled 100 CEOs and board directors, 90% of whom helm companies with more than $1 billion in revenue. All of the firms are affected by the president’s mandate that companies with more than 100 employees require their workers to be vaccinated against COVID-19 or to test each unvaccinated employee weekly.

Employers in the promotional products market and all industries will face fines of $14,000 per violation for failing to comply with the order.  

The research from The Conference Board determined that nearly two-thirds of respondents agree with Biden’s mandate. Still, there was a significant portion that doesn’t, with nearly 35% of respondents saying they don’t agree. Overall, 24.3% said they strongly disagree with the mandate, while 42.3% strongly agree with it.

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The majority of surveyed business leaders agree with Biden’s mandate.

Meanwhile, nearly six in 10 survey respondents said it will be difficult or very difficult to implement the mandate at their companies. Only one in five said it would be easy or very easy. About a quarter were neutral on how implementation might go.

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More than half of business leaders believe implementation of the mandates will be difficult.

While 58.6% of respondents say the mandate has not affected workplace culture positively or negatively, 30% say the requirements have hurt culture.

“While our survey results reveal that the president has significant backing from the business community, the administration should proceed with caution given the intensity of the opposition felt by a quarter of the business leaders and the expected difficulties in implementation felt much more broadly,” said Dr. Lori Esposito Murray, president of The Conference Board’s Committee for Economic Development.

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Nearly a third of respondents say the vaccination announcement has hurt company culture. 

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has been hashing out how implementation and regulation of the mandate will go ever since Biden announced the order on Sept. 9. So far, OSHA’s work has not been made public.

“Unless the OSHA vaccine guidelines put in place are clear and actually achieve the objective, the end result may be more division in the workplace instead of more vaccinations,” said Esposito Murray.

Large businesses have increasingly required employees to get COVID-19 vaccines following Biden’s executive order, even though OSHA has not yet released the rules, according to Yahoo News. Raytheon, which employs about 125,000 people in the United States, ordered its employees to get fully vaccinated “to further protect employees and communities from the risks and uncertainty of Covid-19 and its variants.” The company gave its workers until the end of the year to do so.