Coronavirus: bosses already on track for vaccinated workers

As big business debate mandating vaccines at work, software allowing businesses to track staff vaccinations has been in place for several months.

Brittany Garbutt at Pretzel Australia in Northbridge, Perth, where her VaccTrak has been used since April.

As big business and many of Australia’s leaders debate mandating Covid-19 vaccines at work, many have failed to realise that software allowing businesses to track staff vaccinations has been in place for several months in human resources systems.

Software tracking staff vaccinations has slowly been rolled out in health clinics, disability services and dental practices as expected.

But more widely, it has quickly been picked up by construction companies and hospitality businesses across the country from CBDs to towns with populations as little as 10,000.

In Western Australia, Pretzel Australia has been using ­Employsure’s VaccTrak tool since April. It has now registered Covid-19 vaccines for two of its more than 200 staff members.

The software helps employers develop vaccination reports, provide Covid-19 information and ­resources to staff and record proof of vaccination records, says the company’s entrepreneurial owner, Brittany Garbutt.

“Realistically speaking, Vacc-Trak is going to be most effective in a potential outbreak,” she said. “But this whole situation is new and it’s moving quickly so it’s good to keep track of who might be less at risk.”

Ms Garbutt said about half her staff had registered their vaccination records in VaccTrak ­despite only two having received a vaccination so far.

“What’s interesting about the vaccine tracker is that we have such a young workforce that we didn’t have even one staff member who has been vaccinated in April,” she said.

In the southern NSW town of Deniliquin, Local Dental has also taken up VaccTrak. Human ­resources manager Wendy Wade said the software helped to manage its 28 staff stationed across four different towns.

“If a potential outbreak occurs we need to know which people to contact and the software enables us to do so,” she said.

“It’s good to be able to keep all our records in one place. As I’m using the software, I’m finding other uses for it as well.”

Employsure said it had more than 28,00 clients in Australia, 394 of which had taken up VaccTrak. In Britain however, 5626 of its clients had registered 37,048 employees, 29,369 of which had received vaccines as of April.

Other tracking software models include Vaccine Cloud by SalesForce, whose clients include Spotify, Amazon Web Services, American Express and Toyota.

Deakin University epidemiology chairwoman Catherine Bennett said while vaccinations were the best tool to ensure staff safety, they should not be substituted for personal protective equipment.

“(Vaccinations) are a tool that managers can use to manage risk but like everything else it doesn’t eliminate risk altogether,” she said.

“During this transition period, as we get more people vaccinated, knowing who is vaccinated allows us to manage risks.”