All employees of Atlas Senior Living will be financially incentivized to get vaccinated for coronavirus, the company has announced.

WBRC first reported the news.

Atlas is based in Birmingham and has communities in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, South Carolina and Tennessee. The company is one of the fastest-growing senior living companies nationwide, with plans to expand into Texas next.

The total sum of COVID-19 vaccination incentives Atlas is offering across all of its employees reportedly amounts to approximately $1.1 million. The company is educating and motiving its employees about the vaccine, but did not want to make getting one mandatory.

Scott Goldberg, the president and co-CEO of Atlas, told WBRC that the vaccination incentive program would give two paid time off days to each employee who receives a two-dose vaccine. Additionally, each employee to do so would get another paid day off after 90 days.

If 85% of employees at a respective Atlas facility get vaccinated, those at the location who received the vaccine will get an additional paid day off on top of that.

“The PTO is going to be a big deal because our people need a break,” Goldberg said. “We’ve had people that step up and are working double or triple shifts.”

This program is aimed towards not only keeping residents and employees safe, but also protecting surrounding communities, including in the Yellowhammer State.

”We are putting our money where our mouth is,” Goldberg added. “The decision to initiate this program goes beyond the senior living and healthcare industries. This is a humanitarian decision. We trust the modern technology, the trials the vaccine went through, and the science out there. Now that it is available, we feel a civic duty to our employees to carry this out and offer this program to them. When we say residents and associates’ safety are our utmost priority, we put action behind those words.”

Sean Ross is the editor of Yellowhammer News. You can follow him on Twitter @sean_yhn