| Goals/Principles | - Take a department-wide approach and implement a framework harboring four core principles: consistency, equity, compatibility, and flexibility.
- Create a culture where flexible work is no longer viewed as an occasional benefit, but rather as an intrinsic part of the department, with support from management.
- Become an inclusive, hybrid work environment free from silos, proximity bias, and staff isolation, grounded in a “remote-first” mindset (as opposed to an “office-first” mindset).
| - Foster employees’ ongoing health, productivity, and success, while ensuring the continuity of expert service to stakeholders.
| - Ensure alignment with the core missions of the Medical School and allocate resources accordingly. Key priorities include research, teaching, and service missions.
- Conduct a pilot flexible work plan over 10 months between August 2021 and May 2022 to determine the success of the mission.
- Department heads, functional leaders, and team leads will develop the “50% + plan” for the pilot and submit it for approval.
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| Definitions | - Office-based: Occasional, inconsistent
- Regularly Remote: Consistently less than 50% time
- Mostly Remote: Consistently 50% time or more
- Fully Remote: 100% (Occasional but inconsistent presence in UMN locations)
| - Traditional: Work at any of the University libraries storage locations or libraries with a fixed schedule
- Flextime: In-person with a flexible schedule
- Flexspace: Work anywhere including a mix of onsite and remote but with a fixed schedule. Flexspace designation can include 1-4 days onsite or remote or a day may be split with some onsite and some remote. Calendar designation is essential with a hybrid work designation
- Flextime & Flexspace: Work anywhere with a flexible schedule. Individuals wanting to live and work outside of Minnesota, Wisconsin, and North Dakota will need approval via Libraries HR and the Office of Human Resources.
| - On-site: For the essential functions that usually occur on-site, including: clinical care, research and teaching
- Location Flexible: For work that rarely must occur on-site, including administrative, education, communications, IT, HR, and finance, and in some cases, research.
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| Space | - Confirm employees’ primary work location is conducive to doing their best work.
- Avoid drastic and premature changes to current RIO office spaces. Space decisions will be made at a department-level, mostly at the end of a trial phase, and will take into consideration the overall scope and impact of the new FWAs on RIO’s space needs.
- When optimizing the office footprint, units may need to think about shared space scheduling, depending on their implementation of the profiles.
- In addition to the office-based nature of a position, the need for privacy and confidentiality may guide office space allocation decisions.
| - Additional decisions related to space will be a part of the Libraries Fall 2021 planning process.
| - Increase space dedicated to essential, on-site functions.
- Decrease space assigned to Location Flexible functions by at least 50%, either by combining workspaces or utilizing non-dedicated workspace for employees.
- Assign shared space to Location Flexible staff who are on-site less than 3 days/week. Consolidate the shared and empty space.
- Convert open areas to ‘touchdown’ space, which can be scheduled for intermittent use.
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| Time | - Supervisors are expected to discuss with employees if their role requires a fixed schedule or is compatible with flextime.
- Units with clients and customers, or with staff in different time zones, should establish core hours and discuss availability for collaboration.
| - Core business hours are between 9:00 a.m. and 4:00 p.m., Monday - Friday. Some employees will work outside these core hours to complete their eight-hour work day. Libraries will strive to accommodate everyone who works outside core hours by encouraging regular communications about staff availability through Google Calendar and other means.
| - Location Flexible employees will work remotely at least 50% of the time.
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| Equipment | - As a general rule, employees choosing to work remotely are expected to furnish their home workspace and pay for the Internet.
- RIO will ensure that a full technology package is provided to all employees (computer, monitors, peripherals, webcam, and headset). Additional equipment may be provided during the transition phase.
| - The Libraries will provide staff a computer, monitor(s), keyboard, mouse, webcam, and headset, if appropriate. Staff are responsible for paying for Internet access and any office furniture they require.
- Libraries will work to provide the space and equipment for employees to effectively attend online meetings.
| The Medical School will: - Update desktops with laptops when replaced (approx. 170 needed)
- Equip conference rooms with remote technology
- All meetings will offer a remote option (Zoom)
- Expect all employees have access to a reliable home internet connection for remote work
- Recommend all employees who regularly answer phone calls shift to UMN softphone technology (ClearSpan)
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| Equity | - Supervisors should ensure rules are consistent and fair across the team, consult relevant governing documents and consider the extent to which each role is compatible with flexspace, flextime, or a fixed location and schedule.
- Processes, procedures, collaboration methods, systems, knowledge management, and information sharing must be compatible with staff working from different locations at any given time.
| - Internal meetings should be held virtually unless all team members are present for in-person meetings.
| - Individual Medical School departments will determine which functions should occur on-site, based on the nature of the work, and strive to balance employee preferences as much as possible.
- Not all positions will have the same required on-site work requirements.
- Location Flexible employees are expected to spend time on- and off-site.
- Requests for fully remote work arrangements will be considered by exception.
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| Supervisor Role | - Participate in the department-wide effort to ensure remote work eligibility profiles are appropriate for each role and consistent within their teams; define the conditions for the unit to perform optimally.
- Meet with each of their reports; discuss the employees’ FWA preferences within the eligibility identified for their role.
- Learn to manage in a hybrid work environment, participating in upcoming supervisory / management sessions sponsored by RIO.
| - Supervisors will confer with individual staff members to determine their work locations and schedules. Decisions will be based on job requirements and unique individual circumstances.
| Medical School leaders will strive to maintain a sense of “team” among employees. They will: - Gather teams together regularly, remotely and in-person.
- Rotate group meeting days to vary who attends on- and off-site.
- Monitor for segmentation of groups of on- and off-site employees.
- Be intentional about building in opportunities to gather socially.
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