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SIMCAC members that missed last Wednesday afternoon’s “Back to Work?” event are encouraged to view the recorded session, which was shared on our SIMCAC Slack last week.

For organizations that are planning their return to the office, our panelists discussed best practices ranging from occupational health standards/considerations, to internal communication approaches, to employee engagement strategies.  Our panelists also discussed the importance of vaccination and testing, the state of the global pandemic, when we should expect to return to “normal”, and what ‘normal” will look like when we get there.

After the panel, all attendees participated in an open discussion and Q&A.  During that time, the group shared research and insights on topics including:

• Appetites for “work from anywhere”
• Herd immunity in light of significant vaccine hesitancy
• The impact of lasting epidemics in other parts of the world
• The continued addition of vaccine variants
• Legal questions with regards to employer vaccine mandates
• Advancement and pay equity concerns if certain demographics remain remote while others return to the office
• Impacts on our current local employment centers and mass transit systems

We’ll end with an interesting insight shared by one of our panelists, Bhavna Juneja, Co-founder and Global Vice President IT Life Science and Infrastructure at Infinity:  Bhavna has worked with a number of large corporations across the US and Canada over the last several months, and she shared that over 70% of the companies she’s worked with are not planning to fully return to the office (whatever that will actually mean when we get there) until 2023.  There were a number of additional eye-opening insights that were shared by the panel and event attendees, so we hope you’ll take advantage of the recording if you were unable to attend.

Again, thank you to our panel Swathi Young, Bhavna Juneja, Rajeev Jain and Venkat Subramanian for an incredible event.