INSURANCE company Old Mutual has announced it has adopted a mandatory Covid-19 vaccination policy for its employees in South Africa, effective from January 1 next year.
This will require employees to declare and submit proof of their vaccination status to the company. The firm has close to 30 000 employees.
Announcing this step last week, Old Mutual chief executive Iain Williamson said the company had a moral obligation to make and support decisions that would benefit the long-term wellbeing of its employees, customers and stakeholders.
“Across the world, vaccinations are proving to be the key to unlocking economic activity, returning life to a more normal rhythm, preventing severe illness and death, decreasing transmission rates, as well as reducing the emergence of new variants of the disease.
"We believe that mandatory vaccination is an important step to ensuring we create a safer working environment for our employees and our customers and contributing to the much-needed economic recovery” Williamson said.
The company said that over the past 18 months, it had lost 55 colleagues. Williamson said they had also seen an increase in claims, as a result of Covid-19. It had also cost Old Mutual around 25 000 "person days" or 100 full-time equivalents (FTEs) of productivity due to self-isolation as a result of either infections or exposure.
BUSINESS REPORT ONLINE