Unvaccinated healthcare staff in England face being sacked without an exit payment, an official document shows.
Frontline staff must be fully vaccinated against Covid-19 with two jabs by April 1 – meaning they must have had their first vaccine on February 3.
Healthcare employers have been told that from the following day – February 4 – unjabbed staff should be invited to a meeting and told that a potential outcome may be dismissal.
Whilst organisations are encouraged to explore redeployment, the general principles which apply in a redundancy exercise are not applicable here, and it is important that managers are aware of this
Guidance for employers in healthcare in England
The guidance, published on Friday and reported on by the Health Service Journal (HSJ), is for the implementation of Vaccination as a Condition of Deployment (VCOD).
The 24-page document says: “It is important to note this is not a redundancy exercise. In the context of the regulations, there is no diminishment or cessation of work of a particular kind.
“Employers will not be concerned with finding…
