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 Today in Health it, this story is it's role in return to work in the office. My name is Bill Russell. I'm a former CIO for a 16 hospital system and creator of this week in Health IT a channel dedicated to keeping health IT staff current. And engaged. We have no sponsor for today. So if you are listening to this, you know the Power of Podcasting.

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Okay? Here's today's story. Return to the office raises big questions for CIOs. This is, uh, from Paul Cotty. It is on a website, uh, from Heller Search Associates. So he wrote this article for Heller Search Associates. It's out there. It's a really good article. I, I like it. He, uh, he raises more questions than he answers, but we're going to try to read this article.

See if we can't come up with some answers or different ways of thinking about things. So he identifies 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 different things that he's considering as we move through this pandemic and get to the other side of it and people returning to the office and what that might look like. And this is the time to start talking about that because we are looking at a point where

The vaccine will become abundant probably within the next 30 days with, uh, Johnson and Johnson and Merck producing as well. You have, uh, obviously Moderna and Pfizer. So we're gonna have a fair amount of vaccine. A lot of people are going to be vaccinated and it was always a matter of just getting the supply and once we had the supply, we were good to go.

Not only that, there's also this aspect of treating COVI once you get it. And there have been some significant advances. Uh, Eli Lilly. I was reading an article from Eli Lilly and they have a significant, uh, study that they did where they have been able to essentially take what was a life-threatening virus and reduce it to almost flu-like symptoms.

Uh. And really minimize the impact of Covid. And there was another one, I don't have the, uh, reference here, so I'm not gonna talk about it. But there's, there's different treatments coming up which are gonna make this something that you don't, it's not life-threatening anymore, right? So we are getting to a point where we can treat this with the vaccine, we can prevent it, and with this treatment we can minimize it.

So a lot of things are happening. A lot of good things are happening. So I say that for context. So now we're getting ready to move back into the office in various forms. What we're hearing from CIOs is it's probably gonna be a hybrid type work environment, multiple days, people are gonna get options, those kind of things.

So let's take a look at some of the issues that are brought up by Paul Cotty. The first is. The new physical workspace requirements, how will we handle these in concert with our HR and operations leaders? And he goes on to say, it's easier to be entirely closed than it is to be partially open or open with restrictions.

When our offices were closed, we could swing our IT focus to supporting a newly remote workforce. . For the foreseeable future, we are going to need to support a remote workforce and an onsite workforce and help manage the new requirements of limited capacity on site. Uh, many IT teams are no bigger than they were a year ago, and some are considerably smaller.

I. Fewer people plus more work equals the need for more automation and better technology. And there's your answer by the way. The first step is to sit down with HR and operations and understand their goals for reopening and to confirm the new requirements that they may have. Uh, he really does answer the first one, which is you have to understand what HR is, is going for and understand what the leadership is going for in terms of bringing people back into the office.

And then you have to look at ways to . Automate things and to utilize technology to its fullest in order to make this happen. I will say this is not rocket science. We have been doing this hybrid thing now for a while. I've been talking to, um, a lot of the interviews I'm doing, I'm finding people are already back into the office and the number of people back in the office is starting to grow.

And as that number grows, we are already doing this, this hybrid environment. And I don't think we're finding it all that hard, to be honest with you. So. Uh, I'm gonna go on to the next one. It's organizational role. How can technology help with the workplace, capacity, cleaning, collaboration, and so on. Uh, was that conference room cleaned after the last meeting, deep cleaned or tidied up?

Uh, I, I think this is one of those things that is, I. Top of mind today. But if you fast forward six months from now, we're not gonna be deep cleaning conference rooms. It's, you know, there, there's a lot of things that we're doing today based on what we know of the virus, but as it becomes minimized as people are.

Essentially vaccinated, and we have treatments for this, which make it no worse than getting the flu or common cold. Then essentially, are we really gonna need to deep clean, uh, a, an, uh, a meeting room after each meeting? But we may not be there yet. We may need to do some scheduling things. Again, this isn't rocket science.

We've done this kind of stuff before of, of scheduling resources and, and putting these things in place. It's a matter of getting a reservation system in place. That can handle that kind of, uh, you know, we do this for hospital rooms, quite frankly. When someone checks out of a, a hospital room, we do cleanings and we, we do the appropriate things.

So we know how to do this. Again, not that hard. Uh, equipment issues. How are we going to manage the. Expected split between working in the office and working from home for each employees. You know, this is another one. You know, in the old days, as in a year ago, we could distinguish between people who needed portable computing technology and those who typically came into the office.

I would say this is gonna be a boom for mobile technologies. I. Quite frankly, I think laptops are the way to go. I, I personally have a very large monitor in front of me and a microphone and a laptop. I do everything. I do, I do on a laptop, and it is essentially what I've done for the last, I don't know, I.

20 plus years, I mean, since the compact LTE was first introduced, this is essentially the setup that I've had. And it's just easier, right? When you're on the road, you're, you're taking your hard drive and everything with you and you're able to work, and when you're in the office, you have the setup that you need with the screen real estate and whatnot.

So I, I think we're gonna see a lot more laptops, a lot less . Desktop computers and uh, just new ways to dock and those kind of things. Again, we've done this before, not hard. Are we going to duplicate infrastructure, laptops, monitors, keyboards, mice, power supplies, or are we going to require people to transport their equipment with them or to work sub optimally at home or in the office?

And the answer to that is, yeah, quite frankly, suboptimally . Because I'm working on my laptop without my extended, uh, keyboard or monitor. I, I'm not sure how suboptimal that is. And, but quite frankly, some people will see it that way. And sometimes, you know, if you're doing things like accounting and whatnot, you'll need a special keyboard.

And I think we can make those accommodations and, and have that. But I don't think, we're talking about two different computing environments. One in the at home and one in the office. I think there's a laptop moving back and forth. Uh, you know, mice and keyboard's, not that expensive. . Power supplies come with the, uh, laptop, uh, monitors, I think is gonna be the big one.

Uh, sometimes you have desks and chairs, but I, I've talked to a lot of health systems that aren't supplying those people in their homes. They're essentially saying, look, if you're gonna work outta your home and you need a chair, get a chair. I mean, you know, we're not gonna, we're not gonna set up your home office for you in that way.

So I think that's one of the things that's happened. And which gets to the next thing on this, which is the stipend policy. If we provided stipends for covering additional costs, for working from home, enhanced internet equipment as in the above, et cetera, are these stipends going to continue now that our costs in the physical offices are back to their pre covid levels?

And I think the answer to that is maybe, it really depends. When it becomes a choice and not a matter of safety, then we have to ask ourselves, is this something that we should be subsidizing if . Somebody can't afford to have internet in their home. They can just come into the office. 'cause we have internet in the office.

We have the ability to get your email in the office and quite frankly, it's easier for us to secure that environment and whatnot. I realized that these conversations are a lot harder when you're sitting there with operations and HR and those kind of things and they ha there's nuance to it. But from an IT perspective, if people can't afford to set up their own home office, can't afford to have the equipment that they have into their home, then you supplied a place for them to work and it's the office and they should come into the office.

And I, you know, I hate to be pretty crass about that, but that's essentially. The responsibility of, of the employer is not to set up somebody's home office and give them, essentially double up the cost, but it's to provide a place for them to do their work. Uh, software licenses. Are we going to leave the collaboration products and licenses in place for everyone or are we going to go back to a pool of licenses or a license only for some people, he goes on to saying this, the transition to video happened very quickly with a lot of, or organizations.

Are we going to continue to allow people to use personal Zoom accounts because. They were out of sight and therefore out of mind, I don't imagine a voice only world again. But I do see that we have a one-time chance to implement a consistent video conferencing solution across the co company. Uh, what I'm finding in healthcare, and I do a lot of conference calls with healthcare systems, is Microsoft Teams is pervasive.

Uh, I do most of my stuff I do on Zoom. But every time I'm talking to a health system, it is on Microsoft teams and I think that is not going back, and I think that licensing is not going back, and I don't think there's any need for that to go back. Quite frankly, I think there's a lot of benefits to Microsoft teams outside of just the video conferencing work from home preference.

What are we going to do if a member of our IT team wants to work for us, but D does not want to return to working in the physical office? I think there's going to be policies, right? You're gonna stay with HR and you're gonna say, look, everybody's required to be in the office at least two days a week, or three days a week, or Monday, Wednesday, Friday.

What it, it depends. I think what you're gonna do is you're gonna identify those roles, which need to have some physical presence, and you're going to set the policies. And, and you're gonna put those in front of the employees. Hopefully you'll work those out with the employees and there will be a good back and forth and good conversation around it.

And they will help to be co-creators of the new policies. But at the end of the day, once those policies are set, the employees can choose to adhere to those policies or find other employment. And again, I don't wanna be crass about this. I think there's a . Uh, there's a lot of conversation to have, and I think the employees need to have a voice in this, and I think it needs to be handled very sensitively.

But at the end of the day, if your company has a policy and the worker's unwilling to adhere to it, then the, there really isn't a lot of choices that they are giving you compensation. Are we going to adjust salaries to match the roles, location, or the location in which the work is being performed? I think the answer to that is absolutely no.

Uh, I think. Compensation is based on the role and the work and the value of that work to the system and to the, uh, to the client eventually. And so at the end of the day, I don't think it matters where they work. And if you have, if you've hired people in remote locations and they can do the work and they can prove that they can do the work.

Then the compensation should remain the same. And finally it says, team culture. If we have a more remote workforce long term, how do we build a sense of team? And this is the million dollar question when I've been talking to CIOs as I have . Pretty much since the start of the pandemic. This is the one thing that they are constantly tweaking and thinking about, and they've done some very creative things across these video conferencing solutions and having people work remote.

And they have done, uh, really creative things to bring the team together. They have done an open door kind of policy with their video conferencing so that they can continue to interact with the CIO directly so they can . Continue to hear from their team. They have done games across the, uh, they've done happy hours.

They've done a lot of different things across this. Uh, but I also sense from the leaders that this is a lot harder that they, uh, that they have anticipated it being and. There's a sense in which it would be easier if everybody came back into the office. I don't think anybody wants to get to that point where everybody comes back in the office, but there is a sense in which they know how to do it that way.

This still feels a little foreign in terms of building team culture. There are some people that have been hired in the last 12 months that have not met key people in the organization, and that's challenging, and so we're gonna have to think through that. This is, that's the million dollar question is culture.

How do you . Build the culture. I think we got through it because we had built a culture and then we went into this, and so the culture was already developed. But if you fast forward a year, two years out and people don't meet each other and they don't get together and they don't go to lunch together and they don't learn from each other, then we could have challenges and we will have to adapt or we will have to

Figure out how we're going to do that. That's, uh, that's about enough for today actually. This is a little long for today. So, uh, that's it. If you know of someone that might benefit from our channel, please forward them a note. They can subscribe on our website this week, health.com or wherever you listen to podcasts.

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