Page 9 - BusinessWest March, 21, 2022

Sarah Morgan says employees at Health New England have shown they can be effective working remotely.
Work in Progress
It’s called ‘Corporate Tuesday.’
That’s the name Monson Savings Bank has attached to the second day of the work week, a day when most, if not all, employees will be in the office, said Moriarty, adding that this is the day, considered better than Monday, or any other day, for that matter, when people would schedule in-person meetings, department meetings, and collaborations.
“The parking lot is pretty full,” he explained,
adding that Corporate Tuesday has been in effect since Jan. 1, and has thus far been greeted with a generally positive response.
Beyond Corporate Tuesday and some similar initiatives, there is now unprecedented amounts of flexibility when it comes to work and work schedules, at companies both large and small, a new landscape that has been years (and not just the past two years) in the making.
Indeed, Morales-Lemieux echoed others when she said there was some movement in this direction before the pandemic, especially as the unemployment rate dropped and it became steadily more challenging to attract and retain talent.
“Even pre-COVID, we were really starting to feel the pressure to move into a variety of more flexible work arrangements, even as it relates to our frontline workers,” she told BusinessWest. “As the unemployment rate had dropped over the past decade, coupled with our own unique chal- lenges in Western Massachusetts, such as our aging population and the number of healthcare- related — and non-healthcare-related — compa- nies that we compete with for workers, we had, in the year prior to the pandemic, been talking in earnest about how we needed to change in order to make sure that we could keep a workforce.”
Elaborating, she said this talk involved, among other things, remote-work scenarios not only for attractive job candidates from other states who do not wish to relocate to Massachusetts, but also candidates and existing employees already in the 413.
Suffice it to say the pandemic has served to open more eyes to this need to change and add several layers of urgency to the matter, despite
the delayed nature of the return to work.
But change comes hard to many companies,
said Meredith Wise, president and CEO of the Employers Assoc. of the NorthEast, noting that, in this case, most employers she’s talked with have seen the wisdom of embracing flexibility and not trying to put in place a one-size — or one-schedule, to be more precise — fits-all policy
“We’re advising people to be flexible and talk with employees about what’s going to work for them. And one of the big reasons why is the retention problem that most employers are facing right now.”
or strategy.
Indeed, even most old-school managers who
would certainly prefer to have everyone back
in the office eight hours a day, five days a week, are recognizing the need to embrace the chang- ing landscape and not fight it — for a number of very practical reasons, especially those workforce issues, she said.
“We’re advising people to be flexible and talk with employees about what’s going to work for them,” she explained. “And one of the big rea- sons why is the retention problem that most employers are facing right now; there are enough
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BusinessWest
FEATURE
MARCH 21, 2022 9