In Chicago, 4,000 police officers are facing off with the city over a newly implemented vaccination mandate. In-N-Out burger had their San Francisco location shut down after refusing to implement mandated customer checks. Airlines are increasingly concerned that resistance to vaccination mandates will leave them short-staffed over the forthcoming holiday period.
How can organizations best respond to potential backlash regarding mandates as we return to work?
Mandates aren’t new
Mandates have been used for years to keep people safe at work. Hard hats are enforced on construction sites, office workers comply with security protocols, and truck drivers are required to take regular breaks. However, behavioral science tells us that humans are irrational: and often telling people to do something can prove counterproductive.
Keep off the grass
Ever wondered if those ‘keep off the grass’ orders work? Step forward Robert Cialdini’s “petrified wood study.” The Petrified Forest National Park, in Arizona, contains rare specimens of 218-million-year-old petrified wood. Tourism to the park has risen over time, with visitors increasingly taking samples of the wood home with them. Cialdini and his team wanted to see if putting up signs telling people not to take wood would decrease this behavior. Instead, the opposite happened. Telling people not to take wood with them increased the behavior, as it attracted more attention and created a sense of scarcity.
What does this experiment tell us about how people behave? Just relying on compliance to enforce decisions won’t change behavior. This often leads to something called psychological reactance – a negative reaction from people when they feel choice or freedom is taken away. Unsurprisingly, feeling this way can fuel disengagement, polarization in responses, group conflict, and organizational factions.
A pre-COVID-19 study of (N=5323 across 24 countries) found that anti-vaccination attitudes were associated with the following variables, in order from most significant:n.b.
- Were high in conspiratorial thinking
- Were high in reactance
- Reported high levels of disgust toward blood and needles, and
- Had strong individualistic/hierarchical worldviews
It concluded: “These data help identify the “attitude roots” that may motivate and sustain vaccine skepticism. They help shed light on why repetition of evidence can be nonproductive, and suggest communication solutions to that problem.” (Hornsey et al., 2018). So, organizations have to draw a line in the sand, mandates are here to stay but compliance is not guaranteed without “communication solutions”. Rather than telling employees what to do and risk backlash, we can get the desired behavior change using behavioral science.
A 5-point Manifesto on Using Science to Bring People with You
1. Unite under a common identity
When emotions run high and tension is in the air, it’s easy to have an "us versus them" mentality. But it’s important to remind people what they are all here to do – your company’s mission statement and values are what unites everyone. Bringing people together under a common goal can help diffuse differences.
2. Defang the problem
Open up conversations in an exploratory versus accusatory way. Allow people to share their views without interruption and listen to others without interruption. Present the current challenge that the company is facing and ask people to propose solutions. By engaging, they will get to understand the trade-offs and nuances and be more likely to be sympathetic to others’ views.
3. Be clear and transparent
Providing clarity on how decisions are made will help encourage trust. What is/is not the government mandate? Where does the company have/do not have control? Communicate often and clearly to avoid confusion. What do people want? Do they want only vaccinated people working alongside them? Likely, the majority will have a preference and so providing data to show what is a popular decision rather than top-down will give transparency on how decisions are made.
4. Model respect and empathy
The more we appeal to moral imperatives (e.g., this is good to do; we should do) to shift people’s behaviors, the stronger they will cling to their original attitudes. Instead, frame the importance of safety through human experiences we can all relate to..E.g., what it feels like to be socially excluded, ostracized, or to lose autonomy over decisions we care about. This can help build a more inclusive environment and get people engaged, instead of feeling attacked.
5. Invite experts into the room
Ask people who they would like to hear from on the topic of vaccines. Hearing from subject matter experts can help avoid misinformation, educate the crowd, and promote trust as a person of authority.
As a nation, we are always going to have mandates. And as a people, we are always going to have dissent. This 5-point manifesto shows how you can use scientific-based communications to move forward together with a common goal.
*Demographic factors, such as education level, did not predict attitudes towards vaccines.
