“Flexibility is to the mutual benefit of employees and the employer. It helps to address operational work flow needs, and family needs.” – SHARE-UMass Memorial contract, page 68
When that contract language was written, no one had any idea about what we would be facing 20 years later with this COVID pandemic. It’s been said often: These are unprecedented times. In addition to all the changes that the COVID pandemic has brought to our hospital, we now must cope with the changes lots of schools are making for the Fall. Remote learning and a whole variety of school schedules are the most recent entirely unpredictable piece of the COVID crisis.
SHARE and UMass Memorial Medical Center are discussing how to help employees, keep valuable employees, and keep the hospital running. It’s in everyone’s interest to find ways to help SHARE members be both good workers and good parents, and to limit the spread of the Coronavirus.
We are encouraging departments use all the flexibility in their control to try to make this work for as many SHARE members and departments as possible. The identification of different solutions for different employees is based on the individual employee and the department’s needs without regard for a workforce member’s race, color, national origin, age, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, disability, veteran status or any other legally protected status.
Goals to Be Balanced
Let’s be clear about the goals that we are trying to achieve, though how to balance them may not be easy in some situations:
Operational needs of the department – getting the work done
Work security – keeping SHARE members working despite the COVID challenges
Safety – social distancing, preventing the spread of the virus
Fairness – Balancing needs of all employees in the department.
Guiding Principles for How to Approach a Problem
Flexibility: The more we can empower departments to offer flexibility, the more likely we are to find solutions that work for individuals and the whole department. (See ideas below.)
Creativity is encouraged: If your department can come up with an unusual solution that works for everyone and gets the work done, more power to you! Senior leaders in the hospital are encouraging flexibility, though they do need to know how departments are solving problems.
Transparency: When everyone understands what the problem is and what the limitations are, they are more likely to be able to come up with a solution and understand why a change is a good idea.
SHARE members having a say is key. Working things out together as a department allows people to volunteer to help in ways that work for them. Two heads (or twelve) are better than one when looking for ideas and suggestions.
Not One Size Fits All: Different people may need different kinds of help or flexibility. Every department is different. Solutions for lower income employees may be different than those for higher income employees.
Getting help: SHARE Organizers and Reps and Human Resources Business Partners are happy to help and can escalate the department’s issues when needed.
There may be times when an implemented solution to a problem no longer meets the needs of the department/team and SHARE member. When this happens, the manager should discuss with the appropriate HR Business Partner and SHARE Organizer and Rep.
Flexibility Ideas that Might Help
This is a list of possible items that could be changed to help an employee and department deal with a problem related to COVID and/or Child Care. It is not meant to be an exhaustive list.
Decreasing or increasing hours: Could be permanent or temporary. Others in the department may want to pick up extra time or decrease time in a way that adds up to a solution for the department.
Work from Home: We encourage departments to look with a fresh eye at what tasks can be done from home. Work from Home is functioning quite well in a variety of departments already. Perhaps 2 SHARE members could split the week so that each could work from home on the days their child is learning remotely.
Change to working days or hours: It could be moving from days to evenings to accommodate schooling needs or changing start and end times. If someone is working from home, perhaps the flexibility to accomplish 8 hours of work across 10 hours would help, if the work does not need to be done at a certain time. Or some employees may want to work more on the weekend.
Juggling tasks: Co-workers could swap tasks, to make the timing or work from home possible. Everyone needs to be involved in that conversation, so no one feels “dumped on.”
Bringing (older) kids to work is usually not possible but has worked in some areas in a pinch.
Technological Solutions: IS has been asked to help where technology is limiting flexibility, such as with phone systems that allow working from home. Please escalate these issues so that we can find a solution if possible.
Job Sharing: See page 60 in the SHARE-UMass Memorial contract for guidelines.
Extra staff: Float pool or temporary staff could help.
If your department comes up with ideas to add to this list, please let us know so that we can share them with others!