Using Docusign eSignature to Securely and Efficiently Collect Employee Vaccination Status

New mandates are underway that require employers to collect COVID-19 vaccination status from their employees. Docusign eSignature provides employers with a secure environment and workflow to capture proof of vaccination and assist with their compliance obligations. The solution is implemented quickly and allows for easy modifications as future documentation requirements may change.

Docusign eSignature is routinely used by healthcare providers to send and store Protected Health Information (PHI), which by default is securely stored in ISO 27001 and SSAE 16 data centers using industry standard encryption. Organizations that do not require long-term storage of employee PHI may use eSignature’s targeted envelope purge capability to delete the scanned proof of vaccination, while retaining the metadata confirming employee proof of vaccination.

Recently, the health officer of a large U.S. county issued a public health order requiring public and private employers in the county to ascertain the vaccination status of each employee. As an employer itself, the county needed to move quickly with vaccination status determination for its own employees to set a strong example for the rest of the county's employers. This required distributing information quickly to the county’s entire workforce and organizing incoming data as employees provided their responses. Using Docusign eSignature, the county’s program distributed information requests to more than 20,000 employees in a single weekend and achieved an incredible 90% response rate.

Ultimately, county leadership used Docusign eSignature’s Bulk Send feature to distribute vaccine status requests to all active employees, sending one-page custom forms to groups of employees in targeted batches. With key integrations to their Active Directory employee database, the county pulled pieces of data from other systems to pre-populate each customer form with personalized information. Employees then completed the process by simply selecting and submitting one of six predetermined vaccination statuses and submit. 

Before they sent the email, senior leadership alerted the employee base of the incoming email request. With clear expectations about what information they needed to provide and why they needed to provide it, employees were ready to participate in the program. A manual option was given to those employees who did not use email, to share their vaccination status. Minimizing the information each worker was required to provide helped the county achieve its high employee response rate.  

As new guidelines evolve, the county has been able to continuously use Docusign eSignature to collect information securely and efficiently from employees. Beyond the county’s execution, the Docusign eSignature solution includes an ability for employees to sign via mobile device and integrates with systems including Workday, SuccessFactors, ServiceNow and others. For more information on how Docusign can assist your company or agency in deploying a Return To Work solution quickly, please contact us at ReturnToWork@docusign.com.

*Docusign understands the sensitivity of this topic and is not encouraging employers to track or not track employee vaccination status. Rather, we are here to provide solutions for employers to help navigate the evolving regulatory and statutory obligations and other challenges presented by COVID-19, including helping to generate, distribute and collect employee signatures on documents.