As a young manager, I used to say no one really left my department. I tried to give everyone a part-time assignment when they moved on to their next role. It was a slight manipulation of the HR system, but it allowed me to continue to have access to great talent who could help with special projects and overloads.
I was fortunate a few years later to be able to keep a truly exceptional UNIX admin on the payroll even though he had moved out of state because I already had this process in place. He worked nearly full-time, was paid at his old rate, and we never missed a beat on his productivity.
I mention this because today we need to be seriously thinking about how to enable remote work even when we return to the office. And the key in both of these examples was the ability to find flexibility in the HR rules and partners in HR who understood what I was trying to do and helped me navigate the system.
Today, as CIOs get ready for business as unusual, we need to be calling our friends in HR and talking about how we could hire, enable and maintain a talented employee who never set foot in our state. The iron is hot, we’re dealing with remote workers now, so it’s time to write a policy that says you actually can do this and get HR to sign off on it. hashtagcovid19 hashtagworkfromhome