Can employees offer incentives to employees to take the vaccine? originally appeared on Quora, the place to gain and share knowledge, empowering people to learn from others and better understand the world.

Absolutely. An employee incentive program is something an employer sets up to encourage employees to do something that they otherwise might not. The company comes up with something it thinks employees will find desirable — that it can afford to provide —and offers that in exchange for proof of vaccination. An incentive can be almost anything including time off, cold hard cash, a gift card, a hoodie with the company logo, a free lunch, or a deeper discount at the company store.

Health-related incentive programs are probably the most common, but you can also think of bonus programs or attendance rewards as kinds of incentive programs, e.g. “If you meet our annual sales goal, you get extra money,” or “ If everyone comes to work on time all month, there’s a pizza party,” at least in pre-COVID times. Some incentive programs are based on individual behavior while others require the cooperation of an entire company or team.

Running an incentive program to encourage employees to get the COVID vaccine wouldn’t operate much differently from a seasonal flu vaccine incentive program, except we anticipate that it will not be as easy to host an event in your own workplace (and we wouldn’t recommend it for most employers). And of course, for at least the next few months, the vaccine will be much harder to come by than the seasonal flu vaccine.

Pros are that you may convince some employees to get the vaccine who would not have otherwise and may cause some employees to get vaccinated sooner than they would have without an incentive. This increases safety in your workplace and at large. Cons are that you’ll create some potential liability with an incentive program. There are ways to do them wrong, and you’ll need to spend time and energy making sure that your program is non-discriminatory on its face and in action. Depending on the size and demographic makeup of your workforce, you may also have employees who vehemently disagree with your decision to incentivize vaccination, and they will have a right to speak out about that (just as they would with vaccine mandates); this can cause internal disruption as well as PR problems if it gets out of hand.

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