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Crosby Group launches Global Vaccine Support Program

The COVID-19 vaccine is becoming more available to the public and The Crosby Group launched its Vaccine Support Program to help its team members have an easier time being vaccinated.

The new program provides all employees across the globe with four additional hours of sick leave, paid time off, or equivalent, to offset any work time missed after completion of the COVID-19 vaccine.

“Since the beginning of the pandemic we’ve focused on the safety and wellbeing of our team members,” said Robert Desel, CEO of The Crosby Group. “We put guidelines in place such as temperature checks at the door, social distancing, and a lot of other initiatives to keep the team safe so this new program is really just an extension of all of the other new policies.

“It’s the logical thing to do right now because we still view COVID-19 as a very significant health and safety risk,” said Desel.

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“We’re viewing these extra hours of sick leave or paid time off as if it were another form of PPE.”

Local site leadership will also work with team members to accommodate and support individuals experiencing post-vaccine side-effects that may impact their ability to safely come to work.

“Safety is core to who we are, and we don’t want our employees choosing between getting the vaccine and earning a full paycheck.  Our Vaccine Support Program removes that barrier and supports our team of essential workers,” he said.

The Crosby Group is headquartered in Richardson, Texas, with approximately 30 sites globally including factories in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Longview, Texas and several countries in Europe.

At the onset of the pandemic, The Crosby Group formed a Pandemic Safety Council with internal leadership and outside medical experts to monitor and advise on best practices.

This led to a multifaceted safety program to stop the spread of COVID-19 including a work from home initiative, travel restrictions and guidelines, site health screening procedures, social distancing policies, increased cleaning protocols, virtual customer support and training, modified and flexible work schedules, and other mitigation measures consistent with the guidelines provided by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and World Health Organization (WHO).

The Crosby Group CEO told Crane & Hoist Canada magazine it learned where the vaccine centres were in relation to its plants, average wait times to receive the vaccine, and that immunization takes two doses of the vaccine before determining how much extra time off to include in its program.

“We decided on four extra hours by determining it may take an individual roughly two hours per shot considering wait times, travel and potential recovery. If it takes longer, then obviously in the spirit of the program we would make adjustments. But this seemed appropriate.”

Desel said he believes The Crosby Group is one of the first in the rigging and lifting sector to implement an initiative such as its Global Vaccine Support Program and so far has received a lot of positive feedback regarding it.

“Feedback from team members has been very positive,” he said. “It was received as very consistent with our values and everything we have done regarding COVID-19 from March up until now.”

The Crosby Group manufactures lifting, rigging, and load securement hardware and employs roughly 1,500 people.