A World Economic Forum (WEF) survey, conducted by the market research agency Ipsos reveals that companies are encouraging workers to return to office, but the majority of employees first want strict Covid safety measures to be enforced at the workplace.
In Favor Of Vaccine And Mask Mandate
The report mentioned, “Most workers across the world support vaccine and mask mandates and would feel uncomfortable going to work if these protections were not put in place,”.
The survey report released on Thursday was conducted of over 14,000 respondents across 33 countries between 22 October and 5 November this year.
Interestingly, the period lies before the emergence of the Omicron variant.
Frequent Testing Of Unvaccinated Workers
It is worth mentioning here that India ranked among the top 10 countries who are in favor of both vaccine and mask mandates.
Along with frequent testing of unvaccinated workers.
In India, this study surveyed 500 respondents.
Further specifying that the sample of some countries, including India, tended to be “more urban, educated, and/or affluent than the general population”.
Over 90 percent of Indian respondents ask for mandates which will require workers to be fully vaccinated against Covid.
At the same time, the global average of workers in favor of vaccine mandates is 78 percent.
In this regard, the developing countries (according to the UN classification) dominate at the top 10.
India ranks fifth among the surveyed countries, on the parameter of supporting a vaccine mandate, preceded by China (97 per cent), Singapore (93 per cent), Malaysia (93 per cent), and Saudi Arabia (91 cent).
On the other hand, the respondents least in favor of vaccine mandates were from countries like Hungary (42 per cent), Russia (52 per cent), Poland (59 per cent), Switzerland (62 per cent), and the US (65 per cent).
Coming to testing, around 74 percent of respondents worldwide said that employees should be tested frequently if they were not vaccinated.
In this parameter, again India scored higher than the global average, with 84 percent of respondents in favor of frequent testing.
Although, the desire for testing was the highest in Malaysia (91 percent).
Mask Mandate
There should be mask mandates, too, as it has received a high approval.
On an average, over 81 percent of the respondents globally believed that there should be a mask mandate in areas where people are in close proximity to each other.
Coming to India, this was 93 per cent, the sixth highest among the countries surveyed.
As of Friday, the Covid-19 pandemic had claimed at least 4.74 lakh lives in the country.