Workplace vaccination
17 December 2021
Workplace vaccination
Government has not specified that workers in the horticulture industry need to be vaccinated. Instead, each business is advised to carry out a risk assessment to evaluate if a vaccinated workforce is needed.
The Government has released a new business.govt.nz vaccination assessment tool to help carry out a risk assessment. If you have already done a health and safety risk assessment, such as the Worksafe risk assessment, you don’t need to do a new assessment. You can however consider adding the four factors from the new tool to your existing risk assessment.
Click here to access and read more about the tool
How the vaccination assessment tool works
The vaccination assessment tool consists of four factors. You will need to answer ‘yes’ to at least three factors before it would be reasonable to require vaccination for workers who carry out that work.
When applying the tool to a particular role or job, you need to think about all of the tasks involved in that role, including those that aren't performed on a daily basis.
If a worker doesn’t want to be vaccinated, but the tool indicates it is reasonable to require vaccination for their work, or part of their role, then you must comply with your employment law obligations, eg act in good faith and consider any reasonable alternative employment arrangements or redeployment, or other measures that may minimise risk.
|
Factor |
Lower risk |
Higher risk |
|
Does the worker work in an indoor space that is less than 100m2? |
No |
Yes |
|
Is it unreasonable for the worker to maintain 1 metre physical distancing from other people? |
No |
Yes |
|
Is the worker in close proximity to any other person for more than 15 minutes? |
No |
Yes |
|
Does the worker provide services to people who are vulnerable to COVID-19? |
No |
Yes |
Minimising risk
All business, whether they have implemented a worker vaccination requirement or not, will still need to consider if further measures should be implemented to minimise the risk of Covid.