With the advent of COVID-19, working from home has taken on new meaning. Indeed, with schools closed, virtual meetings often include kids fighting in the background. And family pets frequently make an appearance as well. But employees have quickly adjusted. And behind the scenes, Penn Medicine’s IS staff stepped up quickly to support a whole new infrastructure while employees who have the opportunity to perform their duties at home are discovering new strategies to make it work.
IS comes through for WFH Employees
Reducing the number of employees at work sites across Penn Medicine was an important safety measure to protect clinical staff and others whose work can only be performed on site. A crucial piece of making the plan work was ensuring that the infrastructure supporting operations could continue remotely.
According to Dan Costantino, chief Information Security officer, the Information Security and IS Infrastructure teams worked tirelessly to create an expanded infrastructure “capable of supporting up to 15,000 concurrent remote access sessions at any given time,” he said, noting that “on average, we see roughly 20,000 per day.”
In addition, “IS has been developing a secure remote access portal, which hosts over 75 Penn Medicine applications and internal resources while maintaining a secure connection from any computer in the country.”
With changes come challenges and IS has handled that as well. Its Remote Access Command Center, staffed by over 15 full time engineers and analysts each day., successfully manages thousands of service tickets while engineering “new solutions and expansion of our remote access capabilities.”
Staying Connected and Engaged
Meeting with coworkers — either as a team or one-on-one chats — is an important component to staying connected and engaged. But conference room meetings or spontaneous chats in the office kitchen are no longer options. Virtual connections have now “revolutionized how people can gather for meetings and other events,” said Denise Mariotti, HUP’s chief HR officer. “It has taught us some lessons and forced us to look differently at how we work.”
Robin Ward, MS, senior director of Marketing Technology & Analytics, keeps her team engaged through video chats — with the full team, a smaller group … or just one-on-ones. And she encourages staff to turn the video on. “It’s important to see each other. I don’t care what you look like, I just want to see your face,” she said. “You lose that working remotely.”
Not all virtual get-togethers are work related. Many groups are holding virtual happy hours to stay connected and keep up on news that they’d normally hear about in the office. It’s these “positive accomplishments — such as buying a house or getting married — that we need to celebrate,” Ward said.
Managing home life while working remotely is another important component. While every employee has their own unique situations at home, some strategies could apply to almost any situation. Jen Brady, MA, RD, associate director of Employee Benefits and Wellness, who shares her home with a working spouse and two young children (ages 6 and 3), found four strategies that help her stay productive while keeping the peace.
One: she keeps a daily schedule for her family to set expectations. Second, she recommends finding a specific place at home to dedicate to being productive. ( “You can’t sit in the middle of the floor while kids are running around hitting each other with light sabers!”) Brady also recommends establishing a cutoff time for stopping work, and taking breaks.
“Get outside in the sunshine. Get up and move around. Establish an exercise routine. It helps improve your mood.”