| As COVID hospitalization rates moderate, at least in some parts of the country, many of our institutions have relaxed their restrictions on in-person meetings, and even on mask requirements. Rounding, ambulatory visits, and teaching activities are returning to something more like normalcy. For many of our faculty and staff, however, child-care responsibilities dominate the work-day, mandating that they continue to work remotely. For others, vaccine hesitancy or vulnerabilities from health concerns drive a reluctance to return in person. At the same time our learners, and many of our faculty, are longing for the connectivity and interaction that can only come from a “3-D workplace”, and not from Zoom. Furthermore, it is difficult for newly hired faculty and staff to develop personal relationships in their new workplace without 3-D connections. While it is important that we return to 3-D workplace in our academic lives we need to maintain a flexible approach that takes into account individual concerns, fears, and personal views. Surveys demonstrate that the majority of workers are concerned about returning to a physical workplace— and the biggest worry is contact with someone who is sick. Some HR departments appear to be mandating return-to-work policies that are inflexible and difficult to tailor to any one individual’s personal situation. As academic leaders we should encourage our faculty and staff to return to work in person when and where they feel comfortable, and we should also be permissive when the choice is to continue to work remotely.
The Harvard Business Review has written extensively about the hybrid workplace and I encourage all of us to learn more, and to put into practice knowledge about “the two distinct sources of power that can impede — or facilitate — hybrid work: hybridity positioning and hybridity competence.” What this means is that as leaders we will need to manage the hybrid workplace differently from the in-person workplace, being more aware of how and where our faculty and staff are working, and the challenges that they may be facing. Obviously the trends in COVID vaccination rates are favorable, at least in the USA and other high-income countries, but as the newer variants, delta and gamma, take hold, we may see a Fall surge nationally, or pockets of high infection rates in parts of the country where vaccination rates are low. We just don’t know exactly what will happen, and maintaining workplace flexibility will be key to us getting through the next few months without another shut-down. Warm regards, Justin C. McArthur, MBBS, MPH |