Keeping employees safe
One of the ways we can reduce these health disparities is by ensuring all workers, and in particular workers in essential jobs, have workplace safety protections. Both employers and their partners in community organizations can take steps to prevent and mitigate COVID-19 in the workplace. Businesses that employ RIM community members can be great partners in COVID-19 testing initiatives, distributing appropriate health education materials, creating a safe work environment, and supporting public health interventions such as vaccination and case investigation and contact tracing (CICT) efforts.
Best Practices for Employee Communication Around COVID-19 Vaccines
Employers can play a key role in ensuring their employees can confidently access COVID-19 vaccines, which is the best way to prevent the spread of COVID-19 in the workplace. This not only protects the lives and well-being of your employees, it protects your business from major disruptions.
Promote COVID-19 Testing and Vaccines in Job Readiness Training
Job readiness training can be an impactful place to share information on COVID-19 and vaccine options due to the frequency of meetings and the relationship of trust developed between the instructor and participants. This library of in-language, client facing resources provides step by step guidance and tools for incorporating COVID-19 vaccine promotion information into these trainings.
Conversation Guide: Employer Requirements
With increasing numbers of organizations and businesses requiring vaccinations, it is understandable that employees have questions. For workers in refugee, immigrant and migrant communities, language and other barriers can make it more difficult to have these questions answered by their work supervisor or human resources representative. Instead, they may bring these questions to client-facing staff in refugee service agencies and community-based organizations.
Engaging Workforce Development Boards for COVID-19 Health and Safety
With such considerable influence and the ability to set local priorities, engaging with Workforce Boards has the potential to influence how employers engage with their workers around COVID-19 health and safety and vaccine promotion.
Bringing COVID-19 Testing Services Directly to Communities
Bringing testing services to RIM communities is a promising practice to ensure culturally and linguistically appropriate access to COVID-19 testing services, reduce stigma surrounding testing, and build trust between RIM community members and their local healthcare and medical systems.
Convenient Vaccine Access for Communities
Bringing vaccines to communities, rather than relying on community members to find their way to medical services, is more efficient and has much greater efficacy. Select this promising practice to learn more.
Multilingual COVID-19 Vaccine Education Workshops
COVID-19 vaccine education workshops, facilitated in a language the community member understands, increases trust, and helps RIM community members make informed decisions about COVID-19 vaccine for themselves and their communities.
Assisting Migrants Accessing Second COVID-19 Vaccine Doses
Tracking vaccine doses for migrants is a necessary step towards providing accessible and equitable healthcare for migrants, and can make getting second COVID-19 vaccine doses easier, resulting in a successful completion of the second shot in a two-dose vaccine.
Community Testimonials for Health Messaging
Testimonials are powerful tools to portray real stories from community members.
Staff Testimonials to Normalize Vaccine Experiences
Public health departments, resettlement agencies, ethnic-based community organizations, community-based organizations and others working with refugee, immigrant and migrant (RIM) communities can help overcome misinformation and disinformation by creating their own staff testimonial videos. It can be particularly helpful when vaccinated staff are also multilingual and from RIM communities.
Partnerships with Employers
Local businesses can be great partners in COVID-19 testing initiatives, distributing health education materials, creating a safe work environment, and supporting public health interventions such as vaccination and contact tracing.