Vaccine Messaging: What does leadership look like?

Is it better for the head of a company to get vaccinated last after their employees, or first in a demonstration of behavior-modeled leadership? Many businesses and organizations around the country are grappling with this very chicken-or-egg situation now that a vaccine is within sight.

Nationwide, nearly 40 percent of Americans remain hesitant to take the coronavirus vaccine, and while many leaders and celebrity influencers will be part of a $50M PR campaign, some large organizations like businesses and school systems should consider internal messaging and advocacy to reduce the percent of vaccine hesitant individuals.

Special consideration should be given to industries and organizations of strategic national importance, including in the defense, government, and energy sectors, where maintaining healthy mission-critical persons could prove vital to national security. However, prioritizing vaccinations for these “elite” individuals open organizations to cynical (and justifiable) criticisms that they are prioritizing the elite over at-risk and low-income working populations.

One way forward is to identify via an internal poll or focus group, popular and influential employees in various departments and make them faces of an internal vaccination campaign to all be vaccinated in sequence, much like schools use popular teachers in “Read” posters, that encourage children to pick up a book. Such an effort should focus on black and Latinx employees, as a recent survey found only 14% of black Americans said they thought a COVID vaccine would be safe, because of a long history of distrust for the medical community (WBUR).

Such an effort should intentionally over-sample minority employees and skew toward the low-end of an organization’s pay scale to even the playing field when it becomes time to roll out a vaccine to a critical industry. Especially an industry where there is a valid security reason to vaccinate a CEO and certain high-ranking officers ahead of other members of the workforce. Such an opportunity would also grant these workers valuable “face-time” with the organization’s leadership, an opportunity that most would otherwise never have. This tactic has the added benefit of making it more likely that minority and low-income workers will be considered for future promotions. The occasion would also serve as an informal listening session, which is equally valuable for leaders.

Once employee influencers are photographed or on video receiving the vaccine (preferably wearing organization branding), those images could be rolled into an internal vaccine advocacy campaign to include targeted digital ads, workplace posters, and generic public ads.

An organization might also increase participation by offering financial incentives and asking employees to take photos of themselves receiving the vaccine and pushing the images out on social media platforms with appropriate branding.

As organizations return to work after widespread vaccination, it’s likely that they will still need to wear masks, creating an opportunity for a #MaskUp public health campaign to include weekly contests to decide who has the best or most creative mask, or simply give all employees branded reusable masks.

Regardless of any decision by an individual organization, a broad and aggressive public relations effort, both internal and external, will be necessary to reduce vaccine hesitancy that is disproportionately high among conservatives and minority populations. It is a clear business interest to save the lives of not only their employees, but also their customers, and organizations with the means to do so should strongly consider taking such public action.