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As vaccination against Covid-19 continues to rise fast, many businesses and employers seeking to protect their staff and customers will be looking at the lead the Government is giving and the timing of Government interventions.

This week Cabinet made it very clear that it wanted all public servants not yet vaccinated to take advantage of the programme and get their jabs. It had already decided that unvaccinated health staff would no longer receive the special allowance granted to those who fall ill with Covid19 and this week extended that withdrawal to all public servants. Sick vaccinated staff will be looked after even better.

The difference in timing obviously results from the difference when each group of staff were granted access to vaccination. 

Health workers were top of the list when vaccination started, as being at severe risk of infection, along with other groups of frontline and essential staff in both public and private sectors.

Most other public servants were let into vaccination centres when the second phase opened and still have priority. 

So it is difficult to understand almost three months later why they have not joined the queues. 

The other incentive given public servants was the decision to give priority to the vaccinated when selecting the 25 percent of staff who will be manning offices on the new fortnightly rotational cycle with the unvaccinated to form a far higher proportion of the 75 percent who have to battle at home with all its distractions to do their work.

And it is these decisions that tell us the reasons why the Government has acted. The allowances obviously cost a fair amount of money. 

No one begrudges special allowances for those doing their duty, but everyone would rather the numbers were lower and the money spent on other things, such as better salaries for the public service. 

The Government, like the private sector businesses, has a budget for staff costs, a percentage of its tax revenue, and the more it has to spend on those who decline to look after their own health the less it has for the general pool.

Secondly, and this is where the private sector needs to start taking notice, having most or even all of those on the premises being vaccinated makes a far healthier environment with far lower risks. Since even vaccinated people can be infected, although their symptoms are likely to be far less severe and even the chance of infection far lower, why should they put themselves in harm’s way because some colleagues through laziness or weird and fake advice are reluctant.

Already some companies are now making up their own lists of vaccinated staff and we would expect them to take advantage of the Government’s lead and start choosing the vaccinated when it comes to deciding who the 40 percent who are supposed to be at work on the decongestion rules.

Admittedly they need to also look at the preparation the Government did before tightening up. It first ensured that all staff had practical access to vaccination, rather than just a theoretical right, and gave a lot of time for that access to be used. 

Private employers need to follow that lead as well, making arrangements where they can and certainly organising time off for staff in batches to stand in the queues, even providing transport where that is needed, before they tighten up.

Those who might object to the pressure and to the “favouritism” shown to the vaccinated should remember that all employers, private and public, have a duty to minimise health risks to staff and to ensure the most healthy work environment possible.

If anyone wants an example think of smoking at work. Younger people are astounded when they find out that almost all employers outside the fuel and explosives industries used to allow staff to smoke at their desks and machines, and even provided quality ashtrays and sold cigarettes in the canteen. Big department stores even had ashtrays in the lifts for smoking customers.

The huge cultural and employment shift started around 25 years ago as the first studies showed that passive smoking was a health danger, far less than actually puffing but measurable and still a risk. As the research results firmed up there was a major shift to smoking bans in work premises, rigidly enforced in the disciplinary codes. The reason was the responsibility of an employer to ensure a healthy environment for staff and that made the bans reasonable and so quite legal.

And it would now be unimaginable for a customer to smoke in a shop, inside a restaurant or even in a bar, although admittedly most restaurants and many bars have a section of an outdoor eating area where smokers can enjoy a cigarette because there they are only killing themselves not everyone else.

Employers only go so far and are not trying to nanny their smokers, but any smoker in a factory wanting a puff can be found in a corner of the grounds at tea break and office workers sometimes have to even crouch in the alleys if there is not a better outdoor place available. 

That smoking example is useful. There is no compulsion to quit, but health rules can be enforced in work places to protect other staff and other customers and smokers have to follow those rules or quit or get someone else to do their shopping.

We already have a range of quite legal health rules generated by Covid-19, like mask wearing and social distancing at work and when we shop. 

The Government examples of reserving certain benefits for the vaccinated and applying pressure to ensure staff mingling with others are vaccinated seem to fall within the same ambit of measures to upgrade the safety of a working environment, regardless of the private desires or personal theories of those who come into that environment. 

This means that as we progressively vaccinate our population against Covid-19 we can, and many will argue should, start seeing new employment policies. 

And so long as these are fair, reasonable and rational, and based on top-class and accepted medical advice, they will probably survive legal challenges in the courts, who might well themselves want the lawyers and litigants to flash their certificates as they come in.