Case Studies
Business Actions Against COVID-19
Click here for printable versionUpdated: March 31, 2021
Case Studies - Abbott . Aldi . American Airlines . Amazon . Bet . Cargill . Cargo Transporters . Chobani . Cisco . Colorado . Department of Health & Environment . CVS Health . Darden . Dollar General . Fidelity . Gadget Review . Green Giftz . IBM . Instacart . Town of Ithaca . JP Morgan Chase & Co . LIDL . Mazevo Coffee . Microsoft . NFL . Pinar & Wagner . Render . Salesforce . SAP . Save Philly Restaurants . Sodexo . Starbucks . Stop & Shop . Trader Joes . Tyson . Uber . UPS . Walgreens . Wallmart . Zippy's
Abbott has implemented a weekly COVID-19 employee testing program for all 25,000 employees across 50 sites in 8 countries. The end result? Less than a half percent COVID-19 positivity.
Abbott, which manufactures rapid COVID-19 tests, is guiding other companies and schools to replicate their testing system to help get more employees and students back to work and school quickly.
Regular testing is the key to preventing community spread and enabling businesses and schools to safely reopen.
Source: Abbot
Aldi is offering 4 hours of paid time off to workers who receive both doses of the COVID-19 vaccine.
Aldi is ensuring their frontline employees have the opportunity to receive the vaccine, without sacrificing their income.
By removing any financial barriers to their vaccination, Aldi is promoting safer spaces for consumers, while promoting the health of their employees and continuing to feed the country.
Source: Ald
American Airlines is offering employees who choose to get vaccinated an extra day of vacation, plus $50 in company recognition points. The company’s CEO also wrote to employees underscoring the importance of vaccination.
Given their higher-risk for COVID-19, it is essential airline employees get vaccination. American Airlines decided this significant incentive would help boost employee vaccination rates.
Time off and modest incentives can help reduce barriers to vaccines and make it easier for employees and workers to get vaccinated when it’s their turn.
Source: American Airlines
Amazon is hosting pop-up vaccine clinics at their Seattle headquarters and has offered vaccine distribution support to the Biden administration.
Partnering with Virginia Mason, a Washington-based health care provider, Amazon has transformed its Meeting Center into a large vaccination site for people over age 65, or those over age 50 who live in multigenerational households.
Amazon is helping local community partners meet a critical need and expanding access to safe vaccination for people who live in Seattle.
Source: Amazon
BET has partnered with Tyler Perry to produce news, entertainment and online content that helps fight misinformation and vaccine hesitancy in Black communities.
COVID-19 disproportionately affects Black Americans and other people of color at every stage – from risk of exposure, to vaccine access, to severity of illness and death. As a result, Black Americans are getting vaccinated at much lower rates and dying at much higher rates than White Americans.
Building trust in vaccines is crucial to improving health equity and curbing the disproportionate impact of COVID-19 in communities of color.
Source: BET
Cargill is helping employees who work in its beef-processing plants have easier access to vaccines. They are working with public health officials to have on-site vaccination clinics at certain locations and for those who go off-site they are compensating for the time it takes to receive the vaccine.
Making vaccines available to eligible employees onsite makes it easier to get vaccinated.
By creating easier access to vaccines and a positive culture around vaccinations, employers help make it more likely their workforce will get vaccinated.
Source: Cargill
Cargo Transporters, a Claremont, North Carolina-based truckload dry freight carrier, is working directly with the Catawba Valley Health System to get its drivers and employees vaccinated. The carrier's are allotted two weekly vaccination days: Monday and Thursday, and the company has a target of 250 employee vaccinations.
By working through their employer to get vaccinated, employees have reduced wait times, easier access, and higher incentives.
By reducing barriers to vaccination and directly engaging with the process, employers can increase vaccination rates.
Source: CCJ Digital
Chobani is offering 6 paid hours of time off to employees to get COVID-19 vaccines, and is also working with local public health officials to host on-site vaccination clinics as soon as food processing workers are eligible.
Keeping food processing workers safe is a high priority to ensure the safety of our food supply and the health of those who make our food.
It's uncertain whether moves like this factor into a consumer's decision to purchase a product, but for Chobani's workers it could stand out. The fact that their employer is taking an interest in their well-being during this health crisis could lead to a more dedicated, motivated workforce likely to remain at the company. For Chobani, that means less time and expense finding new skilled workers and training them.
Source: Chobani
Cisco has awarded over $1 million to fund innovative research focused on addressing the many technology challenges brought on by the pandemic.
Cisco has funded research on technology solutions to mitigate the impact of the disease, from predictive analytics, to innovative life-saving devices, to rapid disease-detecting technology.
By funding these studies and cultivating strong partnerships between scientists, technologists, and the broader community, Cisco is working to accelerate research outcomes, improve how technology shapes our response to pandemics, and help break the panic-then-forget cycle in order to build a resilient post COVID-19 world.
Source: Cisco
Colorado is awarding 5-star ratings to businesses that meet or exceed local health department COVID-19 safety guidelines.
This program encourages businesses to implement safety measures beyond what is already required by public health orders to slow the spread of the pandemic.
5 Star certification reassures employees and customers that businesses are adhering to enhanced guidance. The program is completely voluntary and also serves as an expanding directory of establishments recognized for their efforts to keep their communities safe and open.
CVS has begun offering COVID-19 vaccinations to eligible populations at a limited number of CVS Pharmacy locations across 11 states. As more supply becomes available, the company will expand to additional states while increasing the number of stores offering vaccinations.
CVS’ presence in communities across the country makes it an ideal partner for administering vaccines in a safe, convenient, and familiar manner. This is particularly true for underserved communities, which has been a focus for CVS throughout the pandemic.
Partnerships between the federal government, state health departments and major pharmacy retailers like CVS are speeding delivery and distribution of vaccines across the country.
Source: CVS
Darden is providing 4 hours of paid time off to its Olive Garden, Longhorn Steakhouse and other restaurant employees who receive both doses of the COVID-19 vaccine.
Keeping restaurant and kitchen employees safe means they can keep working safely as restaurants begin reopening in many states.
Food service and kitchen workers are critical to our economic recovery. Keeping them safe and healthy, and are being prioritized to receive vaccines in the next phase.
Source: Darden
Dollar General is offering 4 hours of paid time off to workers who get vaccinated for COVID-19.
By removing financial barriers, Dollar General is working to ensure its 157,000 employees across 17,000 retail locations don’t have to choose between their paycheck and their health.
Dollar General stores serve as crucial lifelines in rural communities, where 70% of their stores are located. Providing financial incentives for employees to get vaccinated improves employee health, reduces community spread and creates safer retail spaces for consumers.
Source: Dollar General
Fidelity is working closely with officials to see how the firm can help with vaccine distribution.
Working as a trusted partner to public health makes it easier to identify opportunities for employees to get vaccinated. In Boston, for example, Massachusetts gave the company permission to host a free COVID-19 vaccination clinic for employees who are eligible under current state guidelines in its headquarters.
Removing barriers and increasing communication makes it more likely employees will get vaccinated.
Source: Fidelity
Gadget Review, a technology publication, is giving employees who receive COVID-19 vaccines an extra week of paid vacation.
An extra week of paid vacation is a generous incentive to encourage employees and reduce barriers to vaccination.
Time-off, especially after the long, exhausting year we’ve all had, can be a powerful incentive.
Source: Inc.com
The Grand Rapids Area Chamber of Commerce has partnered with Green Giftz on a t-shirt sale fundraiser to help support staff and volunteers at a local vaccine clinic. Proceeds from t-shirt sales will be used to purchase meals for the staff and volunteers from area small businesses.
The area’s Chamber of Commerce and small business Green Gifts are supporting community vaccination efforts and local businesses through this creative partnership.
Every company has something to contribute to community vaccination efforts.
Source: Grand Rapids Business Journal
IBM has made available an open platform to facilitate vaccine delivery to billions of people across the planet.
IBM is bringing together the power of blockchain, data and artificial intelligence, hybrid cloud, and security technologies to help the public and private sectors speed the medicines from production facilities to doctors’ offices in a trusted way.
Distributing COVID-19 vaccines requires collaboration across a highly adaptable foundation of ‘good technology’ that will speed access to life-saving vaccines and help people around the world return to their work, jobs and schools.
Source: IBM
Instacart is giving a $25 stipend to in-store shoppers and contractors who get vaccinated for COVID-19. (To be eligible, in-store shoppers and contractors must have completed at least 5 deliveries in the last 30 days). Additionally, Instacart is providing free PPE to any in-store shopper in need.
The CDC recommends that food service workers be prioritized for vaccination, after health care personnel and nursing home residents. Incentivizing Instacart shoppers contributes to keeping these essential workers, and Instacart’s customers, safe.
Those delivering food to Americans are part of our essential workforce, and with each additional dose of the vaccine administered, we get one step closer to safer public spaces.
Source: Instacart
The Town of Ithaca, New York is removing barriers to vaccination by allowing employees who have received a vaccine to miss a day of work due to side effects, without it affecting their PTO or sick time.
Some employees may be reluctant to get vaccinated if they believe it will cause them to miss work and they will be compelled to use their sick time or PTO.
This is another creative way to reduce barriers to vaccination, especially for employees who may be on the fence.
Source: The Ithaca Voice
JP Morgan Chase & Co is working with Lyft, Anthem and United Way to provide 60 million free rides to vaccination locations.
Access to reliable transportation is a barrier to receiving health care for millions of Americans each year, especially senior citizens and people in low income communities.
Mobilizing a coalition of partners to transport those who need a ride to and from vaccination sites the most will increase vaccine use, and will be a critical component to curbing community spread in the hardest hit areas.
Source: Lyft
Lidl is offering a $200 bonus to employees who get vaccinated for COVID-19 and has installed hospital-grade air filtration systems in their stores and warehouses.
Working with local health authorities to communicate when and where to get vaccinated, Lidl is offering this bonus to offset employee costs like travel expenses and childcare.
Grocery store workers are essential and Lidl wants to ensure that every employee who wants to get vaccinated can do so as soon as they are eligible.
Source: Lidl
Mazevo coffee, a Montana-based chain of coffee shops, is offering free cup of coffee to individuals who get vaccinated at a local Billings-based pharmacy.
Mazevo coffee is using its “super power” as a small business to provide something meaningful to encourage community vaccination.
All small businesses have something they can do or provide to help encourage vaccination among their employers and the wider community.
Source: KTVQ
Microsoft has launched a COVID-19 vaccination dashboard that tracks administration of vaccines aligned with the federal goal of 150 million vaccine doses in 100 days.
Given the complexity of vaccine distribution and administration, the dashboard is a tool for policymakers and community leaders, as well as the public, to view progress around vaccine rollout, deploy resources where needed and effectively advocate for constituents.
There is a great urgency to vaccinate people quickly, to save lives and build resilience against new variants. But, unless we are tracking vaccinations closely, we can’t understand if we are making progress and why some states and countries are doing so much better at getting shots into arms than others.
Source: Microsoft
The NFL is offering all of the league's stadiums as COVID-19 vaccination sites.
Over the past year, many large stadiums and arenas have been repurposed as polling locations and COVID-19 testing centers, so they’re already prepared to repurpose their spaces for community use.
The NFL is committed to contributing to mass-vaccination events in communities across the country, to ensure that vaccines are as widely accessible as possible and can be administered to large numbers of people safely.
Source: NFL
The small dental practice of Pinar and Wagner is proactively communicating to their patients that their entire staff has been vaccinated and will also continue to follow COVID-19-safe protocols as part of their business strategy and customer service.
This business is communicating the importance of vaccination directly to customers (patients)showing that both sides of the equation, employees and customers value open communication around the vaccine.
Even a simple action like sharing that staff have been vaccinated can help build trust about vaccines.
Source: Pinar & Wagner
The employees of Render Meat and Potatoes, a restaurant based in South Bend, Indiana, will cook and donate 50 homemade meals on a weekly basis to frontline workers and volunteers assisting at a local vaccination site. The donations will continue for at least a month, and the restaurant will change its hours to give employees time for this goodwill effort.
Demonstrating that local businesses are active participants in their communities, the restaurant wanted to show its appreciation for the support they received by paying it forward.
Every business, large or small, has something to offer in helping with vaccination efforts.
Source: South Bend Tribune
Salesforce technology will power a statewide system in California that allows residents to learn when they are eligible to be vaccinated and find a place to make an appointment. It also will provide a way to track vaccination data.
State government and technology company partnerships are solving the logistical challenges of tracking where vaccines are available, registering people for appointments and delivering vaccines to California’s nearly 40 million residents.
Technology companies can help state and local health officials accelerate vaccine distribution by lending their expertise and technology to support scheduling, tracking and other logistics needs.
Source: San Francisco Business Times
SAP is helping Moderna to comply with international legislation intended to prevent counterfeit medicines from reaching patients.
To ensure vaccines remain effective despite a global supply chain, logistics service providers need robust processes, trained personnel, proper facilities and equipment, and a robust delivery network to cope with the staggering volume of shipments.
SAP enables trading partners to exchange large amounts of serialization and associated traceability data. The network includes a blockchain-based verification repository to help eliminate counterfeit products along the pharmaceutical supply chain.
Source: SAP
The group Save Philly Restaurants, a coalition of over 300 restaurant owners, is partnering with Centennial Pharmacy to offer area restaurant workers vaccinations.
Many restaurant workers are eager to get vaccinated but have struggled to find appointments; this partnership has helped over 450 restaurant workers get vaccines.
Partnerships between small businesses as part of coalitions and healthcare providers is a very powerful way to decrease barriers and increase vaccinations.
Source: CBS-Philadelphia
Sodexo has launched #GetTheFacts, a campaign to share educational information about COVID-19 vaccines with their employees to help them make informed choices. The campaign includes sharing short videos from trusted and recognized messengers, like Magic Johnson, as well as from fellow Sodexo employees, and resources communicating the realities of the vaccine.
Employers are one of the most trusted sources of information and sharing educational information directly with employees is a critical way to reach large numbers of people with essential information from a reliable source.
Employee education campaigns are a powerful way to reach people and boost vaccination trust and acceptance.
Source: Sodexo
Starbucks is partnering with state officials, public health agencies, and other corporations in Washington State to help develop and scale models for vaccination centers that can be standardized and reproduced across the state.
Using a 20,000 square foot space on the bottom floor of its Seattle headquarters, the Starbucks team is working on three different models: vaccination clinics, drive-through clinics and mobile pop-ups to go to people in more rural or underserved areas.
Starbucks serves 100 million customers a week in 30,000 stores around the world. The company is leveraging its expertise in operational efficiency and customer experience to help find ways to move people more effectively through vaccination sites.
Source: Starbucks
Northeast grocer Stop & Shop is providing free, fresh meals to staff working at mass-vaccination sites in the markets it serves. These include vaccination hubs at Fenway Park and Gillette Stadium in Massachusetts and the Meadowlands sports complex in New Jersey.
Stop & Shop is teaming up with CIC Health, which operates the mass vaccination sites, to keep frontline vaccination site workers fed and energized. These workers are giving to their community, and Stop & Shop is stepping up to give back to them.
Vaccination efforts aren’t just about the vaccine. They are about the people dedicating themselves to creating a healthier community. The supermarket supports those community members and leads alongside them.
Source: Supermarket News
Trader Joe’s is giving 4 hours of paid time off to employees who receive COVID-19 vaccines, and offering flexible scheduling so workers have time to get vaccinated.
Paid time off to get vaccinated eliminates employees’ need to choose between earning a wage and protecting their health and wellbeing. Since the pandemic began, 134 grocery store workers have died in the U.S. and tens of thousands have tested positive, so affording them time and financial relief to get vaccinated builds safer communities.
Retailers understand the benefits of having a healthy, protected workforce to keep their operations running and customers feeling safe.
Source: Eater
Tyson Foods is partnering with Matrix Medical Network to deploy mobile health clinics and clinical staff to support COVID-19 vaccine education, communications, administration and counseling across its network of 123 food processing facilities.
By supporting its workforce of 141,000 employees with vaccine education and accessibility, Tyson Foods is improving trust and making it easier for employees to get vaccinated while at work.
Protecting essential workers is vital to keeping workers safe and our country’s food supply secure.
Source: Tyson
Uber is pledging 10 million free or discounted rides to help ensure that those most in need can get to and from vaccination appointments.
Uber is building this program in partnership with the National Urban League, the Morehouse School of Medicine and the National Action Network, organizations with deep ties to the communities of color that have been disproportionately impacted by the pandemic.
Offering free or discounted rides helps make sure that transportation is not a barrier to getting the vaccine.
Source: Uber
UPS has rapidly scaled up dry ice production to support the storage and transportation of vaccines, and is collaborating with Stirling Ultracold to supply portable freezers for vaccine storage and distribution.
Meeting an urgent demand for shipping vaccines that require sub-zero storage means UPS can support hospitals, clinics, pharmacies and grocery stores as they ramp up their ability to deliver vaccines.
A shortage of dry ice and portable ultra-low temperature freezers presented an operational challenge to vaccinating hundreds of millions of people in the United States and Canada. UPS is helping to solve this logistical problem by strengthening the supply chain these vaccines require.
Source: UPS
Walgreens is administering COVID-19 vaccines to residents and staff at long-term care facilities across 49 states, Washington, D.C. and Puerto Rico, as part of the CDC’s Pharmacy Partnership for Long-Term Care Program. COVID-19 vaccines will be available in all of Walgreens more than 9,000 store locations once they become available for mass administration later this year.
The pandemic has disproportionately affected residents and staff in nursing homes and other long-term care facilities, accounting for 6% of all cases and 38% of all COVID-19 deaths nationwide. Walgreens has helped accelerate the delivery and administration of vaccinations to this vulnerable population.
Nearly 80% of the U.S. population lives within five miles of a Walgreens pharmacy. The administration of vaccines inside Walgreens store locations and off-site clinics will improve access for tens of millions of Americans, including people living in rural communities and other underserved areas.
Source: Walgreens
Walmart is preparing 5,000 Walmart and Sam’s Club locations to administer vaccines, many in rural areas where access to health care is limited. Additionally, the company is investing in vaccine education so customers and employees feel confident receiving vaccines.
Walmart has space for large-scale vaccination and has focused on addressing vaccine hesitancy head-on. Sharing up-to-date and accurate information from the CDC enables the company to be at the forefront of educating the public about the safety of COVID-19 vaccines.
Walmart is using the CDC’s Social Vulnerability Index, which examines negative health effects on vulnerable communities. This information is helpful in determining where to focus resources and education.
Source: Walmart
Zippy’s restaurants, a Hawaii-based chain, will give its workers digital tokens that can be redeemed for paid time off if they choose to get vaccinated for COVID-19.
The move is a creative and fun way to incentivize employees to get vaccinated, especially in the restaurant industry with so many essential workers.
An increasing number of businesses are coming up with creative ways to incentivize employees to get vaccinated. Every business, including mid-sized and smaller businesses, can take part.
Source: Honolulu Civil Beat
