New Work, New Language
Figuring out a new way to work and then implementing it in all the real-world details required a good deal of forethought, said Jennifer Brearey, AdvaMed’s chief financial and operating officer.
“We were really careful with our telework policy,” Brearey said. “We did a lot of benchmarking at the very beginning. We brought in a consultant to help us.”
The telework policy changes have evolved the language the organization uses to talk about work. For example, AdvaMed has “resident workers,” who work three days a week or more in the office, and teleworkers, who come in at least one day a week. Realizing that leaving employee designations to managers might create inequities among staff, AdvaMed classified positions as teleworkers or resident workers, based on whether a job required more or less in-office time.
About 75 percent of the DC-based staff are teleworkers. Work teams choose a day they would prefer to have in-office meetings to maximize team connectivity. Brearey says some teleworkers choose to come in additional days. Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays are AdvaMed’s most popular in-office days—early weekdays are popular as team meeting days, and AdvaMed provides lunch on Thursdays.
Because staff aren’t in all the time, AdvaMed doesn’t have dedicated offices for each staff member. Rather, it uses a hoteling model, where employees reserve offices when needed (see sidebar). This means people are rarely in the same space when working at headquarters, which Whitaker has actually found useful.
“I don’t know where people are most of the time, so I end up walking three or four laps to find somebody that I might have known exactly where their office was before,” Whitaker said. “The good thing about that is I see 15 or 20 people that I wouldn’t have seen had I just made a beeline to the office [I needed]. So, it allows me to walk around and see people a little more than I would naturally do. And that’s been a good thing.”
Staying Connected
With employees coming and going from the office on different schedules, Whitaker and his leadership team knew that it would be important to help staff stay connected, wherever they were working.
“You’re effective when you’re connected,” Whitaker said. “If you’re not connected, you become less effective. So, I think it’s on us, as senior leaders of the organization, to make sure that we’re driving a culture that is inclusive, connected, and also flexible.”
The new space has hit all those marks, he says.
“People are really happy with the space, the way it turned out. They’ve adapted very well to the new work environment. They still appreciate the flexibility,” Whitaker said. “Some of us who are on the older side of the workforce are sort of longing for the days when more people were here, but that’s part of the reality that we deal with.”
And if dealing with reality is proving to be a challenge for some leaders, Whitaker’s advice is to not fight it.
“The world has changed; accept the reality of that. I think that’s the most important thing for leaders,” he said. “The second thing is, listen to your employees. What is it that they’re looking for, given the fact that the world has changed? How do you keep them fully engaged and keep morale high? If you’re looking for new space, be thoughtful and creative about what you’re doing. Think five or 10 years from now, not the last five years.”
