Recap of October 18 Hybrid Town Hall

November 11, 2021

On October 18, John Barden welcomed team members back for the second hybrid IT Town Hall, held at the Greenberg Center and live-streamed to staff members at home. The agenda included a welcome back to campus message from Jack Callahan and John Barden, an overview of FY22 and future IT goals, a Health and Safety update from Mark Manton (ITS’s Health and Safety Leader), and a Roundtable Discussion with Deans Kerwin Charles and Marvin Chun. The event concluded with a Q&A session. 

A recording of the event is available until November 22 for those who were unable to attend. 

Q&A Session

Please view the event recording for questions previously answered during the event. Additional answers are provided, below.

Parents with young children are having a hard time making future plans due to lack of availability of daycare spots, the inability to yet vaccinate their children, and a lack of understanding of how much time we will need to be on campus after the new year. Is there any information you can share on this so that we have a better understanding of the future so we can make plans? 

University leadership has heard lots of feedback about the complex challenges faced by faculty and staff related to childcare. Thankfully, most public schools, daycare centers, and other care facilities have now reopened. Yale is offering a range of childcare support resources to help parents navigate these challenges. Additionally, it appears that the Pfizer vaccine will be approved for 5- to 11-year-old children by the CDC very shortly. 

The University is working to determine what expectations will be set relative to our future working model and what discretions will be given to each department. I hope to share more information based on formalized guidelines soon. 

Given the majority of those on campus are vaccinated, are the positive cases being reported out all breakthrough cases? 

The public health team has shared that the majority of positive cases at Yale are breakthrough cases. This is fully expected with rates of vaccination as high as ours. The overall numbers remain incredibly low, and vaccination remains our best defense against transmission and, perhaps most importantly, dramatically reduces the incidents of severe disease for relatively infrequent infections that do take place. High-level information about positive cases and daily testing data is available online on Yale’s COVID-19 Data page

You’re telling us to stay home if we feel the slightest bit under the weather and to work from home. Some of us aren’t afforded the opportunity to work from home, so we would have to use PTO. Is the University planning on offering us additional PTO to help with this effort? Or will all of us be afforded the opportunity to work from home in these instances? Thank you. 

We are asking that people who might have (or suspect that they have) a contagious ailment stay home. Employees should discuss with their manager whether the option of working remotely during this period of time is operationally feasible. If not, or if an employee’s work requires them to be on campus, they should use sick time. Visit the Workplace Guidance FAQs page for more information about paid time off for isolation or quarantine. 

Will IT allow an employee to work remotely if a child or elder they care for goes into quarantine and they need to stay home with them, or will IT ask them to use their time for this? This question is for ALL employees not separating them by C&T or M&P. I believe it is up to each department, not a ” YALE ” rule, how our department will handle this. We all proved we can work from home and keep our customers up and running. 

Employees should discuss with their manager whether the option of working remotely during this period of time is operationally feasible. If time off is needed to care for a household member who needs to quarantine or isolate, staff are encouraged to utilize Returning to Yale WorkLife Resources, including childcare resources, or take sick or paid time off (PTO).  

Are the differences in age/stage in life between most faculty and most students driving their preferences in person vs remote? 

Nationally, there seem to be a great many organizational and individual considerations driving decisions and we see that same complex set of dynamics influencing discussions for our IT professionals at Yale.