Today in health, it zoom the company. Zoom is sending workers back to the office. We're going to talk about that today. My name is bill Russell. I'm a former CIO for a 16 hospital system. And create, or this week health, a set of channels dedicated to keeping health, it staff current and engaged. We want to thank our show sponsors who are investing in developing the next generation of health leaders. Short tests are decide parlance and service. Now check them out at this week. Health.

Click on that to give today, we believe in the generosity of our community and we thank you in advance. Alright, this made some waves on social media and it was the fact that zoom has announced that workers living within a 50 mile. Radius of the company office must go to the office at least two days a week.

So essentially, it's not like they're saying, Hey, everybody has to go back to the office, but they are saying we're going hybrid. And, , let me give you some of the article. When the COVID-19 lockdown drove workers from all corners of the globe, out of the office and into their homes, zoom, the video conferencing platform aided the wide reaching shift and experienced skyrocketing profits. However, as COVID-19 restrictions have been lifted over the past two years, the employees from back into the office,

Zoom's rain came to a standstill. Now the company that became the unofficial symbol of remote work is requiring employees to return to the office. And that's probably why this is getting so much press and so much discussion on Friday. Zoom announced that it is implementing a hybrid work model, requiring employees who live within 50 miles of a company office to work in person at least two days a week.

The company said it hopes. The move will enhance interaction and innovation within teams. We believe that a structured hybrid approach is most effective for zoom. I spokesperson for Tzu said in a statement to insider. As a company, we are in a better position to use our own technologies, continue to innovate and support our global customers.

All right. This is an opportunity to talk about. , remote work. It's interesting. I've been pulling CEO's at our 2 29 events. And, , You know, remote work is here to stay. And there's not a single CIO who's talking about. Bringing their people back into the office more than a couple days a week.

Now, there are some employees who are remote, who are not required to come into the office and if they can. You know, get their job done remote. They are not required. To , to come in at all. Some of the questions I have around this. I've been, how does the rest of the culture respond? Like, how does the clinical staff respond when the staff has remote?

And some of the answers I'm getting on that are, , instructive. Let's just call it the, you know, they, they, , there's, there's a lesson to be learned here and that is. If you allow the distance to create distance. Between the people that your it staff are serving and those being served. You were going to.

End up with a problem. And so that's the thing to keep an eye on. And somebody shared a story. How there was a group. I think it was a lab. I could be wrong. , but let's just call it the lab, the lab. Was struggling with their it support and they weren't responsive and they weren't making the changes that they needed to have done. And those kinds of things.

And the CIO had to step in to bring the two parties together. , even in some cases, creating an environment where that team had to come in and spend time with the lab staff. , not changing the policy per se, but at least getting it to a stable ground so that they could have conversations and continue to move things forward.

That's a fairly common story. I'm just sharing that one, but it's a fairly common story where a distance gets created with distance. And we have to be careful about that. And, , you know, if you're going to see those people on a regular basis, you tend to be more accountable. , it's just, it's just general think about it in terms of, , exercise.

Right. If you have a personal trainer, who's going to be in the gym to meet you at eight o'clock, there's a better likelihood that you're going to be there at eight o'clock and you're going to be more accountable. The same. Thing's true for your staff. If they're getting in front of the people that they're serving on a regular basis, they're going to.

, just be more attentive. It's just, just natural, , distance creates distance. And so that's one thing that I will say. So couple things I've saved here. One is, , almost everybody has adopted. Remote work. And, , I think it is here to stay. One of the questions I ask is, , when do you think you'll be coming back to the office full time and the most common answer? I would say 98% is never.

So they're never going to come back. Full-time into the office. Remote work has been adopted. Hybrid work is the most common. , you know, completely remote is not the most common, which is interesting to me. But a hybrid of some kind is the most common. , what do you do with employees that are very remote? There's a, when you're hiring those people, there's an expectation that they will be onsite at least once a quarter, once a year, whatever it happens to be for whatever those events are in those cases, the company covers the cost. If there's an instance where they have to come into the office,

And they are too far away. , sometimes there is a provision in the hiring agreement that they will have to pay for their own costs. If they choose to live in lake Tahoe and work for a Florida hospital, , they will cover some of their own costs. So that's sometimes. , comes up as well. There are health systems that have decided that, , all their employees need to work within a certain, you know, tri-state quad, state, whatever it happens to be area so that they can be within driving distance of the location. , some organizations have decided, Hey, we're going to go ahead and hire nationwide others.

If it looked at a map nationwide and they've marked certain, , areas nationwide, and they've said, look, these are the states you can hire in their green. Green states. These are the states that are a little problematic for us from an HR perspective and from a compliance perspective, maybe even a tax perspective. And they'll mark those as yellow, and then there's the reds and the reds are essentially only if you can't find the person anywhere else in the country.

Go ahead and hire in these states. So, these are just some of the things I'm hearing with regard to remote work. Why do I bring up this story? It's just an opportunity to talk about remote work. , I, I will say this, that there are some problems I've heard Elon Musk talk about this. I've heard. , Jamie diamond, talk about this and I think, ,

Apple and others. , agree with this as well. We're seeing this happen in Silicon valley workers. Come back. There are some problems that are better solved in person. Like you get into a room. There's an energy that's created. There's a dynamic that's created. , you put a whiteboard in front of people and just ideas play off of each other, those kinds of things. I know. We're trying to recreate that with zoom. We're trying to recreate that with Microsoft teams.

And other things, but at the end of the day, there's, there's a dynamic that you can create in person. That is really hard to replicate at least today. In that kind of environment. I know there, we're looking at, , continuing to enhance these platforms to be more collaborative. We're looking at AR and VR also as opportunities to maybe even enhance the situation a little bit more, but at the end of the day,

, you know, a group of people sitting around a pizza, just sort of spit balling and brainstorming. A lot of times will lead to that serendipity as they call it and get you to a solution. So, anyway, Today was an opportunity to talk about remote work and what I'm hearing thought. I would share that with you that's all for today. If you know someone that might benefit from our channel, please forward them a note. They can subscribe on our website this week out.com or wherever you listen to podcasts, apple, Google, overcast, Spotify.

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