Financial Times: Delta variant drives wave of US employers to mandate vaccines

From Financial Times: Since vaccines became available in the US, companies have focused on offering incentives to encourage widespread uptake. Starbucks and McDonald’s gave four hours of paid time off to workers getting their shots. Amazon offered $80. Boeing set up mass vaccination sites at its plants. Behavioral economists typically believe that such “nudges” are highly effective, said Iwan Barankay, but the uptake has disappointed many employers. The reason, his research suggests, is that financial incentives are less effective at changing people’s behavior when it comes to their health. For companies impatient to bring staff back to their offices, “it is really expensive to shift gear again”, said Barankay, so their decision to enforce vaccination is “a very calculated” economic choice. “They re-evaluated the business needs and the personal freedom issues, and the business needs prevailed.” Read the full story in Financial Times.