This week the hospital sent out a newsletter update, part of which outlined the newly updated “work from home” policy. It talked about how COVID really changed the perspective on work from home positions- which prior to the pandemic were fairly rare within the hospital administration world.
In the Transplant department, my data analyst role was one of the few I even knew of that was primarily work from home (except maybe some IT support roles?). And that had even been still evolving. When I started 5 years ago, the requirement was to be on site in office 1x/ week. Then, we backed it off several years ago to 2 x/month in the office, and eventually 1x/month (loosely. 😉 Now, I haven’t set foot inside the hospital since February 2020!)
But all of the managers, transplant coordinators, etc. worked almost fully in person- even though they really just sat in offices, mostly. (Obviously patient care roles would be in person- although I guess even THAT is changing now in some cases, with video conferencing, etc.)
The new policy said though that now, “by default”, ALL hospital roles that do not “require” in person appearance will be work from home as their primary work site!!! WHOA. This is a huge change for many people. Some of the transplant admin roles still entail a lot of meetings, but I guess the world is so good at Webex meetings now that this isn’t seen as a reason to be in person any more!
The letter referenced some hospital admin buildings literally sitting “vacant” for months now…it sounded like they are actually planning to get rid of a ton of that space, or repurpose it or something. Will be interesting to see how this plays out long term in other companies, too. Probably not the best time to be an office building owner. 😬
I personally love working from home, but it raises questions for me, too. I think it might not be for everyone, and I wonder how “everyone” working from home permanently might affect our culture/society down the road- not necessarily in a bad way, but just different, maybe? (I do think that WFH home option increases work/life satisfaction! It’s much easier to balance (non-work)LIFE and WORK if you can have more flexibility, that’s for sure.)
I have heard from some people that they like the idea of a mix- WFH some days, in office a couple days a week. If I lived closer to the hospital, I could see this being a nice option. I’m too lazy to drive downtown though, so I prefer to WFH 100%!!
Asher’s Art:
Yesterday on the no school day Asher worked hard on this drawing all afternoon:
Then last night he started coloring it with colored pencil.
I hope he keeps drawing a lot this summer!! I found a cool online drawing course he might try out, with different video segments that you work your way through.
Daily Gratitude:
I am grateful that work from home is HERE TO STAY. My position already was pre-covid, but sometimes I used to worry that for some reason it would get shifted back to in person. Now, that seems basically impossible. So, I’m glad about that, because I love the flexibility of WFH. (I like to work a few hours, take a longer break and do something else like workout, work more, etc…can’t do that as easily in a traditional office setting.)
GRATEFUL KAE 
That’s interesting to know about work arrangement. I still prefer office work so I can interact with colleagues and clients, which cannot be replaced by zoom meetings. Yet I understand that commuting time can be long for many so a mix of WFh and office would be ideal.
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My company did a complete 180 on this – thank goodness. They had a bunch of staff that WFH and they eliminated those positions in 2018 I think? If you were somewhat close to an office, you were required to go in. If there was no office close to you, you got a severance package. Some people took the severence because they lived in an area like LA where “close” still might mean an hour+ commute. We lost a lot of really good people. Flash forward to covid and the company realized that people CAN work from home. I had heard that they got rid of all WFH back in 2018 because they did an audit and some people were not working a full day on Fridays, etc. So instead of addressing that issue on a case by case basis, they just got rid of the WFH program. Now they are looking at bucketing roles into FT WFM, FT in office, and a hybrid. My role will be a hybrid and I think I will probably WFH 2-3 days/week starting in 2022. I really do like WFH and especially like not having to commute and being able to exercise anytime that I can fit it in. There will be a lot less traveling to visit clients now, too, which I am happy about as I was not keen on traveling with young kids at home. But now I can do client meetings virtually instead of all client travel falling on certain people on our team.
It seems like nearly every company is looking to downsize their office space so it’s a tough time for commercial real estate. I hope our downtown doesn’t suffer long term. My husband has been going in throughout the pandemic since he has his own office and barely anyone comes into work and he said the scene downtown is not good… so many restaurants are closing.
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I too worked from home, full-time, pre-pandemic and my role will remain 100% remote moving forward and because of my personal medical issues I am unable to be vaccinated as the vaccine had been deemed life threatening for me so in the event that I was asked to “come into office” I would request an ADA accommodation to remain home and utilize the conference call option. I do not think there is a benefit to working in office and that everything can be done remotely these days!
I do think that some like the routing of going into the office and should be given that option. I work in a field that handles all of the Business Continuity Planning for a large bank and while most can and will continue to work from home their are some processes in banking which CANNOT be done at home and as such we do and will continue to have people working in offices due to the regulations around money transfers and security. So I doubt our physical footprint in the country will change too much, but we shall see.
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