157: Your Indestructible PR Tip for the Week is About Vaccinations

I learned of a PR tip last week that never occurred to me before. Why? Well, let's just say it's timely. I've just been briefed by my COVID 19 team and the progress we're making on our fight against the virus. Vaccines are medicines that train the body to defend itself against future disease. Unlike other drugs, which we give to some people when they're sick, we. We give vaccines to huge numbers when they're well. President Joe Biden announcing sweeping new vaccine mandates that would be announced from OSHA for any company with at least 100 employees or more. This could affect an estimated 80 million workers. Welcome to a podcast where we help communicators create the right response at the right time and deliver it in the right place. Each week I provide an indestructible PR tip to help you reclaim control in a crisis. So in this episode, the Indestructible PR Tip is the episode. The impact of COVID 19 on our economy, on businesses and organizations, has been beyond anyone's expectation. It's been beyond devastation. Despite the curveball, many businesses have learned how to adapt their oper, their communications, their expectations. And now we're in the next phase of this pandemic. And it's this phase that's really hitting businesses directly Again, vaccine mandates. So here's the story. Around three quarters of U.S. adults, that's 73%, said in August of 2021 that they had received at least one dose of a COVID 19 vaccine. With the vast majority of this group saying they were fully vaccinated. Now back to business. Back to the main street usa. Now, vaccines are on the minds of most small business and mid sized business employers as well as their employees. The majority of small business employers, around 64%, say it is very important that their employees get vaccinated. And more than half of small business employers say their workers are turning to them with questions. So the mandatory coronavirus vaccination for federal employees, that is requiring that all federal employees receive the full vaccination. In addition, the Pentagon has issued a vaccine mandate for everyone in the military. So if you work for the federal government, you're a federal contractor, you're in the military, it is mandatory. Okay, full stop. We're going to move aside from that. But now once we get into the area of businesses, right now the mandate only applies to businesses with more than 100 employees. So that exempts the vast majority of small business and small business employers. And now many businesses right now have already implemented their own mandates, you know, and they've done it with good reason. It could be from leadership that they want vaccinations because they do not want the virus within their workplace. But also it does help to let your stakeholders know that your employees are vaccinated. So many businesses out there are implementing vaccine mandates. So what this means is that the vaccine mandate story is a big story. It's impacting all employees. So if you communicate on behalf of an organization, if you own a business, if you run a business, this is something that needs to be communicated. Now this is not a political podcast. Though I have been accused of being political, it is not. I always want to come in as neutral as possible and I always want to share value and knowledge to help everyone. So the tip that I'm going to provide, the indestructible tip, it is not political nor is it positional. I'm not coming at it from a position. Now I am vaccinated. I believe in vaccination. My kids are vaccinated. But I do understand why people are hesitant to get vaccinated. I was just in a state traveling this week where a lot of people were not vaccinated, where it was a conversation where I overheard people in the hotel, people out at a restaurant discussing why they didn't want to be vaccinated. But that's not the issue for this tip. Again, this is a podcast to help you, to help communicators, to help you respond at the right time and in the right place, the right topic. And that topic right now is vaccination. Are these mandates? So I heard this tip, this very simple tip on a webinar last week. It was run by the sba and here it is, you know, but first, before I give you the tip, this morning I received an email from my kids school and I read to the bottom where there was a chart, there was a table with all the school employees, not by name but by category. And it listed the number of employees that were vaccinated and the number of them that were not. And when I read that, I thought, hmm, they're sharing the number of employees who were vaccinated as well as the ones who were not. And it did make me wonder why. I understood the visibility, I understood the transparency, and I'm all about transparency. But it did make me wonder if the addition of the non vaccinated, was that some type of an inducement to encourage employees to get the shot. It just made me wonder. And I'm sure there's a lot of you out there that work for businesses that do the same I'm not quite sure what was the reasoning behind that, but it did make me think and it made me think about this tip. So here it is and this is it. If 100% of your employees are vaccinated, let everybody know. Vaccination. The vaccination count in your business is a discriminator. So you want to publicize the fact that Your staff is 100% vaccinated. Communicate it on your website, Put it on all your collateral. Put it in your communications. Because think about the benefit to your employees, to your customer. This isn't a political statement. It shouldn't be, but it is a practical one. By publicizing this information, you are managing the expectations of all your stakeholders, their fear or their reluctance to do business with you or to be employed by your business. Don't make it political. Make it practical. So if you have a hundred percent, then tell everyone that you do. And that's it. And that's it for this week on the podcast. Thanks so much for listening. Bye for now. Oh, and by the way, go Red Sox.