As a business owner, you have a legal obligation to:
- Provide a safe working environment
- Act in good faith in the best interests of your company
Irrespective of which side of the vaccination argument you sit, as a business owner you need to put those views aside and ensure that you are fulfilling your legal obligations to the above.
The H&S issue is already fairly widely understood, however, the issue of acting in good faith in the best interests of the company is what do you do if a client or company you sub-contract to introduces a No jab, no Job policy? If you don’t comply, how much will that affect your business? Many companies who contract to aged care facilities, border points (airports, ports etc), and schools are already facing this issue.
This is a challenge which many business owners are currently grappling with and therefore I will be hosting a Question and Answer session at 10am on Thursday 30th September with myself, Max Whitehead (A fellow HR professional) and Mark Todd (Director of Ockham group, a business owner working through introduction of a No Jab, no Job policy).
This will be Q&A session to hear what other companies are doing about this and discuss how can we proactively move forward to address this new and very real challenge to businesses. NB the discussion is not to debate the rights and wrongs of vaccinations, compulsory mask-wearing or compulsory testing at the Auckland Boarders, it is to discuss how we deal with this brave new world as business owners.
I don’t agree so I am going to ignore this!
To put it bluntly, the freight train of COVID passports, mandatory mask-wearing and compulsory testing is already out of the station and up to full speed!
Why do I say this?
- New Zealand’s Health and Safety law was based on Australia’s. Recently the NSW Deputy Premier, John Barilaro told its businesses that they will face “significant fines” if they serve unvaccinated customers who haven’t received their double dose.
- In the last few weeks, a law was quietly passed in NZ that imposes an up to 6 months jail sentence and $4000 penalty on any business that failed to stop a person from entering a workspace without first scanning or signing in
- In the UK you can’t travel to certain places unless you can prove you have been double vaccinated, and Victoria, Australia, yesterday announced similar rules
- Tai Webster was released from his NZ Breakers Basketball contract yesterday for refusing to be vaccinated
So, whether you agree or not, the reality is that these changes are coming, and you can either be ahead of the game or be caught off guard by the announcement at the 1pm Cindy and Ashley show!
So please join me, Max and Mark for a Q&A Session on how to address this issue, and share the knowledge about how other businesses are moving ahead
Cheers
Lisa Mackay
Managing Director