Today, on Business as Usual, the Pittsburgh Technology Council released the results of a “Return to Office” survey that we conducted during the past seven days.
Among the issues that we will explore, include:
Join us on today’s Business as Usual as we explore these questions and more!
Transcription:
So good afternoon, everyone. This is Audrey Russo, President and CEO of the Pittsburgh Technology Council, as well as an organization called 40 by 80, which is the nonprofit organization by the tech Council. So I'm thrilled to be here today. It's Friday, we had originally thought we were going to take Friday off, but you know what, the world doesn't stop. And we want to make sure that we're timely. So we partnered with Chris Ramsey. He's joining us today. He's a labor and employment attorney with Morgan Lewis and a longtime friend of ours, at the tech Council. And we just said, You know what, we have done a lot of interesting things over these last 15 months. But one of the interesting things is, we were periodically sending out some questionnaires, we sent out a brief kind of survey to people who were leading organizations, CEOs and founders. And we we got the results, and we want to share them with you. But not only to share them with you, we've wanted to talk about what some of the changes have occurred, even in the last I believe, 30 hours, 36 hours, maybe with some of the guidelines that were released from the CDC. So Chris Ramsay's with us He is I'm going to take you through the results that we found, and share them with you and maybe share some of the comments. And Chris is going to be here, he's also going to talk about, you know, some of the practices, some of the findings, some of the things that we should all be thinking about. So I'm going to start by, first of all, I want to thank Huntington bank, we didn't give them a shout out here, but they help us each and every day in terms of the work we do here. And today is no different. If you don't know them, make sure you get to know them, because they're pretty amazing partners in our community. The other thing is like each and every day, we have a chat, Jonathan Kersting is here to keep his eyes on the chat. He's also running the, the PowerPoint for us. So like everything at the tech Council, we all wear 1000 hats, and he is going to keep his eye on the chat. And we hope for a lively exchange today. That's really what today is about. So our today's discussion, it's just some findings. And we would like to hear about what some of the questions are that that all of you have, as we think about moving into this next iteration of, you know, COVID, vaccines, CDC guidelines, etc. So I am now Jonathan, if you can go to the first slide. And the first slide was the question that we asked everyone, what do you know, when do you expect the majority of workforce to begin to return to the office or work in the office for at least a portion of their schedule? So you know, what's really fascinating here, and it's no surprise, because of the shift that's happened over the last 15 months, is that first of all, people were waiting to see if we would sort of hit the 70% mark. And you know, a lot of it's guesswork. And you know, you'd hope that on the trajectory, we were on in the state of Pennsylvania, that we would hit that 70% Mark sooner. But it was in many ways it was just an extrapolation on on vaccines. So you could see that by June, July, like 31% of the of, you know, employers are saying they'd like to have people back in the office. That's what they planned by August or September, you see another 31%. And then you see some other things right that most of our employees are already working at least a portion of the time in their office or been many companies that have continued to work around the clock, and it cuts across every cluster. It's not necessarily like in manufacturing, it's been, you know, in autonomy and in robots. And you know, even in software, there have been people who are working in the office around the clock and taking precautions, taking lots of different kinds of precautions, but really embracing best practices and social distancing and keeping people safe as much as they can. So it was interesting to see a small percentage of people had said earlier, this is, you know, relatively fresh. So this being like the last 10 days, that people are saying no one's coming back to the office until next year. So you know, we um, some people have said in the comments that they some people will work remote, some employees will continue to work remote. We have like anecdotal comments, some people have put in, some people have said depends upon available space. Some people have said that, you know, one person said we don't have we haven't formulated our return to the office at all. We haven't even really thought about it. We're really work, you know, trying to keep ourselves current on projects and commitments that we have to date. And then some say they're going to experiment. They're going to experiment like let's see what it's like in June or July. Let's see Look at competence levels, let's see what we can do to make sure that we're adhering to safety and, and the like. So I want to go to the the next slide. And we asked about seven questions. So post pandemic, you can see how many days per week to expect most of your employees to spend in the office. so fascinating that you have five days per week, less than 20%, what we saw here was 18%, four days per week, you know, a little less 16%. But what was fascinating is this three day per week model, the end two day per week model. So if you add both of those up, you're saying, Wow, it really looks like half of the peep out of the employers are really looking at people not being in the office for three days or more. And that piece is really, you know, interesting as well, and then no expectation for in office work. And that was about 9%. Now, mind you, we're gonna continue to do these kinds of surveys and ask this question so that we can maintain the pulse of what we're hearing. But some of the other things that we've heard are, let's see, we're going to bring people back on a hybrid and phased in schedule, we already have a voluntary return, but it's not that many staff returned to the offices 100% optional. And some people were saying it will be up to the employees to decide. So as we continue to explore all this, and we continue to do more surveys, you know, we'll drill dip, you know, deeper into some of the things that we've heard. So now, we're gonna go into the next slide, Jonathan, and the next slide, the question was regarding the actual vaccine. So how are people sort of handling as leaders actively encouraging employees to become vaccinated. And not only that, you know, we said, 75%, that's what we're seeing, and that matches actual national trends, that's a win anything that we've benchmarked. So also, we are requiring or considering a requirement for employees to receive the COVID vaccine. And we're gonna get into that a little bit with Chris Ramsey here to talk to talk about that matter, as well. And then some people offering incentives to become vaccinated, we're paying close attention to our workforce and the vaccination process. So you can see that, you know, the majority of of the companies that responded are, you know, very much actively involved in terms of encouraging people to get vaccinated. So I'm looking for some of the comments here. Let's see some of the comments. Yeah, I don't I don't see that many comments on the on the vaccination. So let's go to the next question. Regarding facilities, that was another thing that we were pretty interested in is what, you know, what's happening in the physical environment. And, you know, as you know, that's, that's sort of, for a long time. That's a measure of what it means in our region in terms of proliferation of employment. And we looked 32% said, they anticipated increased investments in hardware, software, and hybrid car, you know, collaboration, no surprise, and shouldn't be any surprise, all of us have been on zoom. And there's lots of new technologies that are coming out each and every day. Interesting thing is 44%. Anticipate changes in the physical layout. So everything from Hotel desking, improved spaces for collaboration, and or really spreading out and trying to think through what that means for working in an office environment. So 23%, did anticipate, and we've heard a lot about this about an anticipated reduction in our real estate footprint in the coming month. So we did hear it just just to note that we did hear that there are people who say changes in the physical layout meant that they were expanding distances. So I would imagine that there's probably some that are taking up more space. But we really didn't ask that particular question. So those of you who are survey geniuses, you can criticize me later in terms of the methodology and some of the questions, but just realize our heart was in the intent of just trying to extract some good information. So you can see that the anticipated reduction in real estate footprint, you know, 23%, and we have heard that we have heard from companies that are that are smaller and even midsize, that are saying, you know what we're going to let our leases run out, we're going to rethink what our strategy is. We're going to look at how many employees we actually have to come into work and how many employees actually live in our region because there was there is movement of people hiring people that actually don't live in Pittsburgh and are on their payroll. So and then some had na and again, don't criticize us. For the actual survey methodology, just appreciate that we're trying to engage the community in this conversation. So Jonathan, next slide.
So the majority, the question was regarding productivity, remembering this is this is from the lens of people who run companies or founders of companies. So for the majority of our employees, we have seen improved productivity during the pandemic, there's 33%, which is pretty significant. And then most said that productivity has stayed the same. So and then a small percentage have said they've seen a decline in productivity. And I can't, I can't, I haven't done any analysis about what those sectors are. And in terms of those responses, but you can see that there's been, you know, a pretty optimistic feeling about people's productivity while they've been working remotely. So next question. So regarding visitors, this is something that we were interested in, particularly regarding what is applicable to your current policy. So we wanted to know about that, because what does it mean to press flash and to connect with people, and so you saw that little over 50%, they're allowing meetings to occur within their offices that include outside visitors. So business as in many ways, that's business as usual. That's half, that was half of the respondents, then there were some who were very adamant about not allowing guests to visit, and to visit, and they expect that to change. And that's, I think we're going to get into some of those conversations with Chris being with us today. And then there are some are saying, We're not allowing visitors, we don't want anyone in, we don't have processes in place to try to address that. We're not exactly sure what the boundaries are, and and how we stay in our lane to make sure that we are not, you know, creating an environment where we're not being, we're not being accommodating. And so Ben asked us about 80 companies respond, and so those are 80. leaders. So there you go, then, Okay, next. Okay, so this is what we wanted to also find out regarding external meetings and events. So what's happening? You know, are we are people hanging out with one another? are they meeting people, employees? Are they almost 80% were permitted to participate in outside meetings with customers or suppliers. So and little less than half employees were permitted to attend local and business related events. Now, in the comments, there were a lot of reaction to is this indoor is this outdoor, how many people what's the limits, etc. So this is again, this is just sort of like just a snapshot and a reaction to in person, events and gatherings. And then there were many who said they didn't feel comfortable in making sure that employees were most likely not to be permitted to participate in external events, particularly those that were inside of places, outside events. were obviously people have higher receptivity there. So let's go to the next one.
Route. That's it? Sure.
That's it. Okay, so let's see. So we have Chris Ramsey here. And he's with Morgan Lewis. And he's a labor and employment attorney. And he he and the team at Morgan Lewis are actually pretty active and, you know, trying to figure out what how they can advise their, their clients and what some of the postures are. So let's see if we can answer a few questions. But, Chris, do you want to set the table at all? Or do you want me to jump into the conversation into the questions
here? I'll just make a few comments. I just saying these results for the first time I myself. And it's not terribly surprising to me, that we see the variety. There, there is not a single direction that we've seen with our clients, or the workplace in general, in my much more unscientific survey than yours. But we are seeing a variety depends on the industry. And in many cases, it depends on the size of the employer. And it depends on just the person, the preferences of the employer, so that there is a variety and part of that I think, is due to lack of specific guidance. There are guidelines that we can talk about, but there's not a lot of specific guidance telling employers what they must and must not do.
And so what about HIPAA, this keeps coming up this whole thing about the offer and definition of HIPAA and what can you ask people, both people that are on your team that are you know, that a part of your staff as well as people come into your office, whether they're customers or visitors. Can you talk about is a misnomer? Sure.
Yeah. I mean, the general response to the question of can we ask somebody if they are vaccinated, I mean, that's, that's the The context here, obviously, and the answer is yes, you can. You can do that with your employees you can do that with with visitors as well. Those are not HIPAA violations. Now, there are guardrails that you we recommend you put it, put it into place. Any information about whether somebody is vaccinated or not should be maintained in confidence? privately, if it's in writing, it should be maintained in some sort of private folder or file for the employee that's not publicly available to other employees. So So there are some guidelines on what to do with it. But can you ask that Yeah, you can ask that question in order to set your your workplace rules, and then employers have a lot of discretion to set their workplace rules.
So what about the question that Bob Chapelle asked that if some employees, you know, declined from being vaccinated? Can we use the word force? Can you enforce I would say those employees to continue to wear masks in the office. And when they work in office spaces, or,
I mean, obviously, this is a very new topic, because of the CDC guidance yesterday that came out the the guidances that vaccinated fully vaccinated individuals, including employees in the workplace need not wear masks. So employers certainly can see the extent they have had mask requirements in the workplace can relieve those vaccinated employees from those masking requirements from requirements relating to distancing even some of the temperature checks and other screening procedures. Whereas for unvaccinated individuals, employers can continue to have those requirements in place. So that is a change. You know, it's too early to tell what employers are going to do because some may choose to continue to have their policies and practices in place for all employees masking social distancing, just for ease of administration.
And so, Mike brella asked, Can you, you can ask what do they have to answer under HIPAA? Again, it's the terminology of HIPAA. You can ask but then maybe people need to understand again, reframe what HIPAA means.
Yeah, I'm not a HIPAA attorney. But you know that the general answer is you can't force an employee to do anything, right. I mean, if the employee doesn't want to answer a question, if the employee doesn't want to, let's say you're an employer that mandates vaccinations, and someone, can you force somebody to get a vaccine? Well, no, you can't force anyone to do that. But you can. You can create workplace rules that have consequences to those refusals to answer. So if you don't have information that somebody is vaccinated, let's say, and your policy is we're not going to allow people in the workplace who are not vaccinated, that person can be deemed to be unvaccinated and either not allowed him to the workplace or must follow the rules for on vaccinated employees in the workplace.
So can I if I was going to hire someone new? I can I make that a requirement? for the job that you need to be vaccinated? You need to show evidence there? Oh,
yeah, that's a tricky question. It may depend on it the nature of the position. As with any vaccination policy, whether it's for current employees or newly hired employees, you do need to make accommodations for those who cannot get vaccinations due to medical or disability related reasons, as well as those who may have religious reasons to not get a vaccination. So as long as you take those those circumstances into account, then you can otherwise require vaccinations of other employees and applicants.
And so in terms of the CDC recommendations, and then comparing what Governor Wolf put out, are there are there any discrepancies there? Or is the direction clear enough?
Yeah, I mean, we can certainly always use additional guidance. You know, I don't think the CDC was was directing all of its guidance to the workplace. But my understanding is that the state of Pennsylvania follows CDC guidance with respect to these types of rules. But it's an important point to keep in mind for those employers who are nationwide employers are in many states, there are different local and state rules that are either in place now or are in the works that everyone needs to be aware of. So there may be rules that are more restrictive in certain states that there is legislation. I'm not sure if any of that has passed yet, but in certain states that would perhaps prohibit employers from asking whether somebody is bad vaccinated or requiring vaccination to enter the workplace. So be mindful of those rules that may be local to different jurisdictions.
You know, I think that just reading through some of these comments, again, I've read through them quite a few times. But it's interesting on the space piece, because I know that, you know, square footage, you know, matters. And in terms of how we allocate, we went through this whole shift, as an economy to go into open offices, right. And people get, you know, their cubes have been smaller and smaller. And we've moved into this hotelling. And I and I get the sense through the reaction in the comments in the survey, that people are concerned like, now what do they do, they've got hotelling space, they've got, you know, space, that's, that's pretty contained. So some people actually, some leaders have actually said, they may have to take up more space, they really may have to, but they're there. They're sort of waiting to figure out how to do that you think we'll ever get back to like, when I started my career, you got like a corner office? And you know, the door close, and you had a table in there? I wonder if there's sentiment around that.
Hard to say, obviously, the guidance from yet from the CDC yesterday may change some thinking about this? No, I think we've all learned a lot over the last 15 months about how we can be productive in ways that we perhaps didn't think about before. And I think a lot of employers have found that they can be productive, others have found Well, there's nothing like in person, connections between employees. And we want to encourage that. So it's really up to the employer.
Well, I think what we heard loud and clear here is that most are not going back to work five days a week in an office, most of working but not going back to work in an office, we heard that loud and clear. And that's a behavioral and sentiment shift. Right? That's, that's something that we're hearing everywhere. So now people are saying, when we come to work for you, Chris or Audrey, I, you know, I I'll plan on being the office three days or less. And that sort of a different kind of ethos, and, you know, culture, in terms of, you know, moving forward, I, you know, we have all seen incredible amount of productivity and positive reactions to not having to be in a physical building for each and every day. But I wonder if the way that we, you know, this vaccine continues to have a lot of hesitancy because that's where I think we've hit in America in terms of these hesitancy levels. It's not just in Allegheny County or Pennsylvania, we have a lot of surplus vaccines right now. And people being very hesitant to take these vaccines, we also have not experienced what we need in terms of a booster. So there are some comments and people have talked to me around, well, gee, we're going to go into the following may need a booster or you know, there's a different kind of strain. And what is what does it mean, then? So we're on a, we're, you know, obviously we're in a new world here, Chris, where we're really in a new world, and many of us are looking, we are looking for the, you know, the guardrails. And we're looking for ways to figure out how to create a great environment, how to create great access, how to keep people together. So I would like to know, is there anything that anyone would like to learn in here, too, in terms of a future poll? Are there questions that we should ask? We're just going to do regular kinds of polling, so that we continue to make sure that we understand the sentiment and then Taylor is going to share the link to the report so that you can see what you know, we asked this time and what some of the findings were. So is there anything out there that people would like to ask Chris as we, as we talk about this, okay. Sandy Harvey are offices implementing visitor policies? Yeah, I think I, I touched on that lightly Sandy. But, you know, we talked, maybe we refresh that, Chris, about visitors. So when visitors come into your space, so let's say my space, everyone's vaccinated, we still have distance protocols in place, etc. And then Chris comes to visit us. What are some of the what's your advice on that? Yeah,
again, all of I think with respect to employment policies, employee and visitor policies, it really is going to depend on on the company that preferences, but I think legally you can have a policy that requires a visitor to be vaccinated in terms of what people are doing. I think the survey would speak better to that than my own experience with with our clients. But I think that you can require visitors to get vaccinated. Sometimes I think that employers may may feel awkward about asking a visitor and if it's a a common vendor who comes into the office a lot, maybe the you might be more comfortable asking or maybe you go to the company, the head of the company to contact the company itself and say Hey, we only want you to send vaccinated our employees here. And you can do that he searches.
Yeah, that's great. So there are some questions in here that I think we want to embrace in this next polling. So how are employees shaping up with hybrid policies is set three days? We're gonna follow up on that. Thank you, Amy for asking that. And I think Sandy Harvey will ask about the office, you know, visiting policies. We'll do that in our next poll as well. But Diane's asked, What about gatherings and events and airline travel policies? We should we should ask that. But what's happening on the airline side? Are there rules still, Christopher, let you know about airline travel and masking?
Yeah, well, CDC has guidance does not affect the continuing mandate for masking for public transportation. So that includes airlines, that includes trains, buses, subways, that may be evolving, you know, all of this is evolving. So it's so important for all employers to be flexible, and, and be keep keep up to date with all of this guidance. But right now, masks are and distancing to the extent possible and saving in a subway or on an airplane are still going to be required masking in particular, and my understanding is that the airlines are will continue to enforce that.
And so there's another question this is geared towards you, Chris, about an employee claims to have a medical condition that precludes getting vaccinated or wearing a mask, can the employer require any documentation to substantiate that?
Yeah, so that is really not that different from a request that anyone who needs an accommodation for a medical condition might like have in the course of employment. And, you know, depending on the condition itself, you can require medical documentation to support any kind of accommodation in the workplace. That's what we're talking about here is a reasonable accommodation under the Americans with Disabilities Act. And part of that process is to have a back and forth it's called an interactive process with the employee to understand from the employee and then from the employers perspective, what accommodations might be reasonable here, and that's a good point, there may be different than in different circumstances for different employers.
That's a good point. And that's a good reference point to use as a litmus test for decisions that you're making. So what I'd like to say to everyone is, first of all, thanks for joining us really appreciate having sort of this impromptu last minute conversation, although we're excited that we had a poll that we had just completed, send us your questions, and we're going to save the chat, Jonathan, thank you for being the you know, the PowerPoint provider today. And I know I jumped in on some of the questions, but I think we're gonna we're gonna save them and embrace them in our new in our new polling, and I think we're, the questions are still like, coming in. So someone said, Hey, we're not given approval for employees to travel via airline. So yeah, I think it's definitely lots of questions, lots of comments. Taylor's gonna post the link to the survey in here. I hope she's done that she was having a little bit of a hiccup with her connection. And I think Lexi, just Lexi, just put them in. So thank you. So thank you, Chris Ramsey at Morgan Lewis, thank thank you for being with us today. I know that you have a team of experts there, right, that are working on this round the clock as as things started to change. So appreciate knowing that that kind of support is out there for all of us. And we will take your questions, send them to Jonathan, send them to Brian Kennedy, any of us and we will incorporate that into some regular regular polling. So appreciate appreciate everyone's time. It's a beautiful day to day. Thanks for joining. We will save the chat. And thanks again, Chris, at the last minute for joining us really appreciate it. Say what's on the what's on tap for next week. Jonathan?
Well, Monday. We're very excited. It's our next installment of the High Tech High touch healthcare series we're doing with the Jewish health care foundation. So we're gonna be welcoming Nicole Lambert. She's from myriad and really just changing the way they deliver health care should be a great conversation. That's great.
Okay, thanks, everyone. Thanks again, Chris. Thank you. Have a great weekend.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai