Your Role as a Manager in Supporting the Vaccination Program

September 2, 2022

As managers, you have an important role to play in maintaining the momentum of Yale’s Vaccination Program.

It is your responsibility to confirm that your direct staff have registered their vaccination and booster status or applied for an exemption. This requirement applies to all faculty, managerial and professional staff, postdoctoral associates, and postdoctoral fellows, other than those with approved exemptions. Please review the details of this announcement for additional information, including deadlines to receive the booster. As of March 2022, the deadline to receive booster shots has been increased to within 14 days of eligibility.

Any newly hired faculty, managerial and professional staff and postdoctoral/postgraduate trainees must be fully vaccinated and also be boosted (as of March 2022, booster shots must be received within 14 days of eligibility), or obtain a medical or religious exemption, as of their first day of work. Newly hired staff in the university’s unions must be fully vaccinated, or obtain a medical or religious exemption, as of their first day of work. 

You are also following the disciplinary process if your staff fail to comply with the university’s vaccine policy.

The following points will help clarify roles and responsibilities.

Managing Vaccination/Exemption Status

Your Health and Safety Leader (HSL) will:

• Identify staff who have not registered their initial series or booster vaccination status or applied for an exemption. 
• Inform managers if their staff are not in compliance.

As a manager, you will need to take action if an HSL has notified you of direct staff who have not registered their vaccination status or applied for an exemption.

• If you receive such a notification, you should meet with the staff member to understand why they are not complying. These meetings should be considered high priority, private, and confidential.
• Your Human Resources Generalist (HRG) will also be informed of noncompliant staff and are available to support you throughout the process; provide materials, timelines, templates, and guidance related to the disciplinary process; and if appropriate attend the meetings with noncompliant staff members.

Managing Staff with Approved Exemptions

As a manager, on an ongoing basis you will monitor release time for voluntary testing for employees. An approximate time needed for testing, including travel to and from, would be one (1) hour; may vary depending on distance to nearest test site. We recommend that managers identify testing windows for your staff members that will not disrupt operations and ask them to schedule within that window.

Additional Information for Managers

• It is an individual’s responsibility to comply with the university’s public health and safety guidelines. If you observe significant and consistent failure to comply with those guidelines you should escalate the violation(s) to your HRG to determine how to address the situation.
• Managers should not request that their vaccinated and unvaccinated employees sit separately at meetings, in breakrooms/lunchrooms, or other locations. Again, it is an individual’s responsibility to comply with the university’s public health and safety guidelines.
• While managers may be informed if employees are unvaccinated, managers should not ask, nor will they be informed, why their employees were granted an exemption or share their vaccination status with others. 

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