To share best practices of how our members are responding to one of the most pressing challenges related to vaccination against COVID-19, we asked our member Nasdaq Riga how they go about vaccination in their company:

In the times of pandemic Nasdaq fulfilled its mission, in particular, ensuring the markets that Nasdaq runs and marketplaces for which we supply technology can continue to operate and smoothly manage huge spikes in volumes and volatility. These priorities have been guiding our decisions and actions and enabled Nasdaq to take early measures and stay a few steps ahead of the developments: we established a dedicated COVID-19 taskforce; well in advance reviewed the pandemic scenarios of all our BCPs; communicated with the clients, regulators, tested WFH capabilities for all the staff, ordered needed equipment, fixed accesses; implemented a split team/physical distancing approach, and later on; switched to predominantly Work from Home setup.

Employee’s health and wellness are mission-critical, which is why Nasdaq offers health care benefits and well-being programs to help employees and their families be healthy. During the pandemic since spring 2020, a number of additional wellness benefits were offered to employees in order to provide physical and mental assistance: two fully paid flex leave days per month, two extra fully paid leave days per month for parents and caregivers, full compensation for an extended sick leave, enhanced bereavement policy, ergonomic chair allowance, number of activities to ease the burden of quarantine restrictions like unlimited online sports activities, dance classes, meditation sessions (e.g. via the Calm App), mindfulness toolkits, allowance for online development activities for children, coaching sessions for parents.

• Is your company encouraging vaccination and how?
  Nasdaq is proactively and closely monitoring the COVID-19 cases and vaccination situation in all locations, incl Riga. We are following local law regulations as well as the guidelines and recommendation of World Health Organization and Centers of Disease Control and Prevention, as well as local governments. We are providing the information about vaccination to the employees so they could take an informed decision and the vaccination is a voluntary choice of each employee.
• Have you used or planning to use collective vaccination for your employees?
  No, since office here in Riga is small.
• Does your company provide incentives to employees who choose to get vaccinated?
  Nasdaq supports its employees willing to vaccinate and provides fully paid time off for employees, who are willing to get the vaccine, and, if needed, for recovering after it.
• What are the largest challenges for you as an employer in this process?
  There are no challenges, however, we all are looking forward to return back to normal as soon as possible.