By Josh Lambert
Covid-19 vaccinations and Covid-19 boosters are very topical, and now a large proportion of the Australian population are vaccinated.
It’s now a really good time to be talking about covid vaccinations at your workplace and the booster program moving forward.
Planning Covid-19 boosters for today and beyond in your corporate wellbeing program
And it just so happens that, at the current moment in Feb 2022, our team at Pinnacle Health Group are really busy with 2022 wellbeing programs. And, funnily enough, at the top of the agenda for lots of our workplaces is covid boosters. So there’s lots of questions that are coming to us pretty thick and fast.
It was obviously quite fast moving in the second half of 2021, so I just wanted to point out a couple of basic but key bits of information to help answer some of those questions if you are in that same position where you’re considering that for this year.
Common question 1 – Is it like doing Workplace Flu Vaccinations?
If you have previously organized flu vaccinations at your workplace before, the good thing for you is that organising Covid Boosters is a very similar process. As many would already know, the traditional way of delivering flu vaccinations is onsite at the workplace, where nurse would come out on site to your workplace and administer flu vaccines to employees that way.
Common question 2 – Is there a voucher system (like Flu Vaccinations)?
For Flu Vaccination programs, there is also a pharmacy voucher system as well, that allows employees that can’t make it onsite for their vaccination to attend a partnering pharmacy (thousands across Australia and New Zealand) and receive their vaccination there. Unfortunately that doesn’t apply for covid boosters here in this instance.
So, put simply, the main difference between flu vaccinations and covid boosters or covid vaccinations is that it has to be on site, so it has to be on site at your workplace.
Common question 3 – Is there a minimum number of employees for Covid-19 vaccinations onsite at the workplace?
The other key information or the question that we’re getting is around the “minimum viable number of employees”.
Put simply, for Covid-19 boosters, the program is based on a day rate. So it’s really a 1-day minimum call out to the workplace to administer those vaccinations. The day call out enables up to 130 vaccinations to be administered to employees in that day.
Our advice to clients is to focus on the major hubs or offices in each state or region, and set this up as the vaccination hub – in order to maximise engagement and make best use of the vaccination day.
Common Question 4 – When should you run Covid-19 boosters at your workplace?
The other key takeaway is that it can happen at any time. With flu vaccination programs, if you are familiar with this, there’s esentially a window of time between April and June where flu vaccinations can be administered, in order to avoid sickness over the winter months.
The covid boosters, given it’s been so fast moving and each individual employee may be in a different stage of their vaccination journey, it will mean that employees will receive their second dose or perhaps their first booster at different times. It’s important to note that the covid boosters can be delivered at various times throughout the year that hopefully suit your organization, and suit your employees at those different times.
Ideally, you should aim to plan these boosters for maximum engagement, which will often be at different times of the year in different states or regions. We have all of the guidance and advice as to when these periods are, so please don’t hesitate to ask us!
If you have any other questions at all, please get in touch with the Pinnacle Health Group team.