UMass Medical School division shifting 500 employees to remote work
Photo | Courtesy of Google
333 South Street in Shrewsbury
Commonwealth Medicine, the consulting and operations division of UMass Medical School in Worcester, will shift 500 employees to a work-from-home hybrid model, taking them out of the school’s 333 South St. location in Shrewsbury, the school said on Wednesday.
The remote-hybrid model is being championed by the medical school's human resources department, which sees flexible work arrangements as making UMMS an employer of choice in Central Massachusetts, said spokesman Mark Shelton.
Commonwealth Medicine employs roughly 1,000 people, of which 600 typically work in-person at the South Street building, which houses a myriad of other administrative offices for the school, according to UMMS.
Following the coronavirus pandemic, which shifted non-essential staff to remote work, Commonwealth Medicine plans to move its staff in that building to a hybrid form of work, wherein about 500 might be working remotely on any given day with the remaining 100 rotating time in the office.
Despite being forced to switch to a remote-working model during the pandemic, it actually worked out quite well for the medical school, Shelton said, as the Commonwealth Medicine staff not only maintained their business and contractual obligations, but grew its business as well.
As part of realizing its staff could work efficiently remotely, Shelton said the entire medical school is in the early stages of reviewing long-term real estate needs.
"We have a number of functions essential to operations at South Street so we expect to continue to have a significant presence at any given time," Shelton said in an email.
This shift is on par with ongoing trends in the wake of the pandemic, which altered the way many employers and employees approach the way their work gets done, particularly with white collar workers. One of the most notable companies to make this shift in Worcester in the last year was the Tennessee-headquartered insurance company Unum, which moved 400 downtown Worcester employees to remote work permanently last July.
WBJ Web Partners
Most Recent
Most Recent
0 Comments