Page 16 - BusinessWest March 31, 2021

others remotely.
Chuck Leach, president and CEO of Lee Bank,
said that, prior to COVID, HR Director Susie Brown and IT Director Drew Weibel were already hard on work on plans to position the bank to be more flexible with its workforce in terms of where and how it worked. The pandemic served to accelerate that process.
“Even though we’re Lee Bank, a lot of our employees come in from other markets,” he noted, adding that these lengthy commutes prompted talk and then creation of plans for
“We have, over the past year, hired people in Florida, Tennessee, Atlanta, Minneapolis, Upstate New York ... we have a pretty remote workforce.”
remote work and hybrid schedules. “We were already thinking about it, and COVID forced us to be more deliberate in our approach and our poli- cies and procedures.”
But even with these options in place and far more flexibility with work schedules than ever before, the bank is tilting strongly toward having people work on site — with some exceptions — and it’s also seeing most of its employees want to come back, which is another thing companies are learning as they work their way through COVID.
“It’s a mix, but many certainly want to come back,” Weibel said. “They’re lonely ... they actu-
ally want to work in more of a community setting. They want to come back, but some find it easier to work at home until the school situation is worked out and their children are back in the classroom.”
Stack agreed. “When the shutdown first hap- pened, everyone was excited to work from home, so a lot of people exercised that option, and some people have found they’re more efficient from home, cutting out that commute,” she said. “But while some still work from home, the majority of people, like 97% of the people at MBK, choose
to come into the office every day because they don’t want to work from home.”
Work in Progress
DiGiorgio said it’s somewhat frustrating to walk around his company’s offices in Tower Square.
More than 200 employees moved into the well-appointed space covering three full floors in the late summer of 2019, only to see pretty much everyone pack up and go home to work in mid-March.
“We love it — we wish we could be in it more,”
Will Dávila, executive director of the Children’s Study Home, says his agency has learned a number of lessons during the pandemic, many of them involving better use of technology.
he said with a laugh. “It’s great space — open- floor design, all the things you probably don’t want with COVID. It will be great to get back to it.”
Indeed, that’s a lot of fairly expensive (for this market) downtown Springfield real estate that is not being used. But DiGiorgio doesn’t dwell on matters that are out of his control.
Instead, he’s more focused on what the future will look like — and applying all the lessons
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