Hybrid and remote work plans to continue through end of fiscal year

November 1, 2021

Dear Faculty and Staff,

It has been wonderful to see so many of you back on campus this fall, and we hope you have been able to take advantage of our welcome-back activities, whether coffee in a courtyard or a movie night on Homewood Field. The kinds of interactions we get when we come together are foundational to our identity as a place of education, discovery, and service, and we are grateful that the extraordinary level of vaccination among our community, as well as our continued diligence in mask-wearing and other measures, has allowed us to do so safely. We are hopeful that improving public health conditions will allow us to relax our COVID restrictions further so that we may benefit more fully from the in-person elements of our work.

As you know, we entered this semester with a set of comprehensive plans for conducting our work in a mix of modalities—in person, hybrid, and remote—and thanks to your hard work and creativity, that experimentation is going well. We are able to be together in person much of the time and have sustained the health of our community, and we know that many of you have appreciated the increased flexibility this plan has afforded.

Consequently, we have decided to continue our pilot work arrangements and maintain our current mix of in-person, hybrid, and remote operations through at least the end of this academic year (June 30, 2022).

We still have a great deal to learn about the optimal work arrangement for our community, and so we will be engaged in a process of assessment, informed by your input and feedback. With support from Human Resources, divisions and departments will be evaluating and adjusting their plans, considering best practices from other parts of the university and outside organizations, and helping us determine what is working well and what enhancements or improvements are needed. We will seek to balance the desire for consistency across the institution with the individual needs of our divisions and departments, and to ensure that varying work arrangements don’t hinder individuals’ professional growth and opportunities.

Keep an eye out for surveys and focus group opportunities in the months ahead. We look forward to engaging with you as we develop an exciting new understanding of the future of work at Johns Hopkins University.

Sincerely,

Sunil Kumar
Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs

Laurent Heller
Senior Vice President for Finance and Administration

Meredith Stewart
Interim Vice President for Human Resources