Nonprofit organizations, large and small, along with private sector employers, are now on their own after the recent SCOTUS ruling with regard to imposing vaccine and face covering mandates by private employers.
Mandates alienate some people because they are forced to do things they do not want to do – some for legitimate reasons and many for spurious reasons. Adding to the mix is how mandates can jeopardize their jobs.
On the other hand, without a mandate, unvaccinated and unmasked workers in nonprofits make workplaces unsafe for other employees and their constituents. When there is resistance to reasonable Covid protocols, a minority of workers can cause unrest in the workplace for the majority, and perhaps compel their most valued colleagues to find other employment.
It Is Not About Life or Death
Public arguments for getting vaccinated and wearing a mask often revolve around the potential of losing one’s life to Covid. As life insurance salespeople will tell you, most people do not want to hear about their mortality and most people do not act on what they don’t want to think about.
Talking Points
I suggest employers, co-workers, and federal and state governments use the following pocketbook and self-interest arguments to get through to the holdouts.
If you are infected with Covid you may:
- Lose wages from being too sick to work.
- Infect co-workers, putting more work on your plate.
- Incur the cost of medications that are not covered by insurance or have a stiff co-pays.
- Have nasty deductibles and co-pays for doctor or hospital visits that can add up to thousands of dollars out-of-your-pocket.
- Become Long Covid, which could take you out of work for months or years, on top of deep suffering.
- Lose your sense of taste and smell for a long time… yuck!
- Cause your kids to miss school, not get educated, and get depressed.
- Cause your organization’s medical insurance rates to rise, costing you and your co-workers real money.
- Have a greater chance of dying – and you haven’t gotten that life insurance yet.
- Make a widow / widower and orphans.
- Cause your spouse to become sick resulting in all of the above.
- Infect your co-workers resulting in all of the above.
- Miss out on that promotion, because of all of the above.
Share this with your unvaxxed and unmasked colleagues. It might dawn on them that their ill-advised decisions can be quite costly to themselves, their families, and the mission they are serving … even if they are not one of the 1,700 people dying each day in America.
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Copley Raff’s mission: Every interaction is to help nonprofit organizations fulfill their missions by meeting ambitious goals, aligning their leadership, elevating fundraising, and activating the brilliance of their teams. It is a bold promise but one that we know will serve you and your organization’s mission in a way that will deliver tangible and meaningful results – the kind of results that make a real difference!
