Epic Systems, other tech firms want workers in office

With the COVID-19 pandemic winding down, electronic health records giant Epic Systems Corp. in January 2022 began requiring workers to spend almost all of their time at the company’s sprawling Verona campus.

Its policy requires nearly all of the privately held company’s 13,000 employees work from the office every day, though they can take 10 half-days each year to work remotely.

Technical Services Division Lead Nate Bubb said Epic’s policy is its “true North Star,” enabling the company to execute its mission of helping nurses and doctors do their best work.

He said Epic has monitored hybrid work trends and has decided in-person work is its only viable path forward, making the company stand out as one of the earliest and most passionate advocates of in-person work since the beginning of the pandemic.

Bubb has been working at Epic for more than a decade and said that while the number of remote-work exception days may change, the intention won’t: In-person work is here to stay for Epic workers.

He said most of the employees he spoke with when Epic’s current remote work policy was created agreed with his team, and that his team talked with a wide variety of workers.

“Being able to walk down the hall and hop into a room, do complex things together, that’s the majority of the time,” Bubb said. “That will be the way we continue to serve our community.”

A survey of 4,500 companies by Scoop, a company that helps businesses navigate remote work, found that 75% of tech companies — more than in other industries — were either fully remote or allowing employees to choose when to be in the office. But more companies were requiring employees to be in the office at least some days, especially at larger technology companies.

About 8% were requiring employees to be in the office full-time. It found that larger tech companies were more often requiring hybrid or in-office work.

Some of Epic’s former employees say the company’s push to get employees back into the office early in the pandemic propelled their departure.

Cassy Smithies said she worked full time on Epic’s design team from June 2020 to May 2022.

“The (remote work) flexibility was one of the main reasons why I left because being there for my family was something really important to me,” Smithies said. “Now I’m in another role where I can do that and can drop things and go fly out for a week and then come back and get back into the office and be just as collaborative as before.”

Smithies now works a hybrid schedule as a senior product designer for Fetch, a Madison-based company behind a mobile app that helps consumers earn various rewards from retailers.

The argument since COVID restrictions began to ease in late 2020 has been that working from home eliminates the need to commute and provides workers with flexibility. The counter-argument is that in-person work makes for better employee collaboration and communication.

And Epic is not alone in requiring workers show up at the office.

Madison’s Exact Sciences Corp., known for its at-home cancer-screening test, Cologuard, offers a hybrid-work model. The company has around 6,300 employees globally, including 3,000 in the Madison area.

“We believe that remote work offers great convenience and is needed for certain positions, but it’s the in-person interactions that spark creativity, collaboration and innovation,” said Sarah Condella, executive vice president of human resources at Exact Sciences. “Remote work is an option for specific positions, based on the availability of the skill, type of work and the level of interdependence on others required for the role. However, most of our roles are performed on-site or hybrid.”

Other tech companies, such as Salesforce, are reversing course after saying workers could “work from anywhere,” and recently began encouraging people to return to the office. It’s gone so far as to donate to nonprofits of employees’ choice as an incentive to show up in person.

Dan Olszewski, director of the Weinert Center for Entrepreneurship at UW-Madison, said many important features of the workplace are difficult to replicate on Zoom. But Olszewski said some of the advantages of in-person work can be achieved with a hybrid schedule, especially if commuting is an issue.

“It’s hard to really engage new employees in the company and feel virtually,” Olszewski said. “The mentoring that goes along with that, a lot of that tends to be informal, running into people at the water cooler.”

The consensus among employees about hybrid work is mixed, Olszewski said. Some crave in-person work and connection, while others prefer their own space. Many feel somewhere in between.

“Hybrid work is here to stay,” he said, pointing to a July report from the McKinsey Global Institute that office attendance in the country is 30% below pre-pandemic norms.

Another former Epic employee, Aris Blevins, said he was the design director of clinicals and analytics at Epic between July 2020 and June 2022.

Blevins said he continually felt stuck trying to juggle demands around productivity, camaraderie, safety and the desires of his team — without feeling like he had an ultimate say in many decisions.

Blevins is now the director of user experience at Sonic Foundry Inc., a Madison company that makes software for distance learning and communication, where he works a hybrid schedule.

“This is the right balance for me,” Blevins said. “Being able to come in, not every single day, with a family and kids.”

Workers around the country are divided on whether to embrace hybrid work.

Among Americans who have the ability to work remotely, 65% prefer it all the time, compared to 32% of workers who want a hybrid model, according to a recent Forbes study.

Those who prefer an out-of-office lifestyle point to the need to balance their personal and professional lives, the study states.

Moving forward, it is predicted that 22% of the American workforce will be remote by 2025, the Forbes article said.