When considering your career or job options, you’ve always put location at the top of your list. That’s because most healthcare IT positions required that the person be on-site every day.
Over the last few years, many organizations have allowed their employees to work from home occasionally and, in some cases, on a regular basis. This is a great perk. If working from home on a regular basis is an option, it would allow you to expand your job market, as it would mean not driving to work every day. If a person had to drive to an office five days a week, they may be willing to drive only 30 miles a day. But if that same person had to drive to an office only two days a week, they may be willing to drive up to 50 miles each time. So while working from home may present a nice perk to those employees who find it appealing, companies are expanding their reach of potential candidates by requiring them to work on-site less frequently.
With the emergence of COVID-19 literally overnight, just about anyone who had the ability to work from home did. Many companies are reporting their surprise at just how well this new arrangement has worked out. In fact, quite a few have talked about making working from home a permanent perk. I think that, moving forward, positions will be classified as 1) full-time on-site, 2) part-time on-site, and 3) full-time remote. Organizations will require some time to properly evaluate which positions best fit into each category. But once they do, we will see that leaders are prepared for certain positions to be full-time remote. Multiple healthcare IT leaders I’ve spoken to feel that up to 35% of their current team can do their jobs remotely 100% of the time and be every bit as productive as they were when working on-site.
So that brings me to my next point: Historically, when people have considered their career options, they’ve imagined only as far as their local marketplace or those areas where they’re open to relocating.
What might your career look like if you were to begin to consider your options nationally? That is, working for any company in the U.S. that’s open to hiring you without requiring you to relocate.
As the economy starts to come back, many professionals will find that this particular aspect of the future of work will provide many more opportunities when compared to the past.
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