Children's Hospital Association: Return to the Office. Empowering Teams and Individuals

By Grant Heiman

The often talked about new normal is quickly approaching. For many organizations, this means figuring out what a modern workforce might look like to best suit their goals.

Children's Mercy Kansas City is in the middle of this process. With one-third of its 8,400-employee workforce in a forced-remote capacity by March of 2020, the hospital’s leadership started to understand what the workplace may look like moving forward.

"We quickly realized that we needed to look at working from home as a long-term possibility,” says Jennifer Kingry, vice president of finance at Children’s Mercy. “By May of 2020, we formed a remote work project team and pulled insights from facilities, finance, human resources, information systems, strategic planning and compliance."

The remote work team started with research and industry insights to understand its organizational needs, then conducted internal surveys to get feedback from employees.

With an overwhelmingly positive reaction to remote work, the team moved to establishing clear guidelines and implementation efforts.

“So much of this project was about change management and communicating to staff why we were doing things and how we were doing it,” says Kingry.

Managers worked with their teams to identify the type of work conducted at home and the office, communication preferences and schedules for each employee.

“Having our policies in writing and then making sure we all understand them was an important lesson and huge enabler for this work,” says Kingry.

Children’s Mercy has rolled out its updated policies and effective July 1, 2021, and 1,800 employees will be fully or partially remote.

Read the full article via the Children's Hospital Association

Learn more about Children' Mercy locations across Kansas and Missouri.