Remote Experience Manager at BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee

Whenever we’re asked to share a success story from our transition to a remote-first work model, Sherry Crawford springs to mind.

Sherry’s a software quality assurance analyst who’s been with BlueCross for 33 years. In her role, she supports and tests software changes for different areas across the company, including our member-facing BCBSTN app and our BlueAccess consumer portal. She’s also one of our fully remote employees.

Though she worked from home one day per week before the pandemic, Sherry told us she embraced the opportunity to be fully remote.

“Since I don’t have to drive to campus, I’m using that extra time in the morning to mentally prepare for the day and the tasks I need to complete,” Sherry said.

Sherry also noted she can concentrate better due to fewer interruptions, and her stress levels are lower becauseshe can sleep a bit later.

Our Remote-First Approach

Our technology and digital teams are here to solve business problems and improve our users’ and members’ experience. And we can’t do that unless our employees feel we’re supportingtheir needs. Our shift to remote work wasan opportunity to offer employees like Sherry the flexibility that matters to them.

 ​We initiated enterprise-wide surveys that were specific to remote work, in addition to our annual employee engagement surveys 

BlueCross has more than 6,500 employees in 32 states — a geographic presence that’s doubled in the past five years — and 89 percent of our employeesprimarily work from home full-time. Our pursuit of a nationwide employee presence has allowed us to target markets with certain hard-to-recruit skill sets.

A few hundred employees are regularly on-site at our headquarters in downtown Chattanooga, Tenn., and in our Memphis and Nashville office spaces, but they’re allowed to work from home as often as they like. We use our offices for team building and reconnecting, not making people feel obligated to be there.

Overall, our employees’ response to remote work has been overwhelmingly positive, as evidenced by our continued high engagement scores:

• 92 percent overall engagement

• 98 percent understand how they contribute

• 98 percent enjoy working remotely

Remote work isn’t a new concept for us, but when we decided to send all but our ‘lights on’ team to work from home full time in early 2020, we knew we had to strategically anticipate challenges with this shift — that way, we could be ready with solutions. We implemented a crawl-walk-run approach to listen to feedback, make changes, adjust things that weren't working, and build on those that were.

We initiated enterprise-wide surveys that were specific to remote work in addition to our annual employee engagement surveys. We also created advisory committees for both employees and senior leadership. We changed by enhancing resources and increasing flexibility.

We care about protecting our members’ information, so we already have strict information security policies and procedures in place.But with so many employees working on BlueCross-issued laptops outside of our network, those protections had to be enhanced. We have around 800 technology professionals on staff that are responsible for protecting our members' data, maintaining security protocols, and keeping information technology systems operating at optimal levels across the company, and we had to invest in the right virtual and digital collaborative tools.

However, there were some things we didn’t want to change. We knew the key to ensuring this work modelwould be a successwas inretaining our company culture.

Consistent Connectivity

To give employees the opportunity to reconnect in person, whether for business-related needs or just to see each other, we began hosting monthly ‘Welcome Wednesdays’ at our Chattanooga campus, where lunch is provided for employees. Managers are encouraged to schedule team meetings on these days and create in-person collaboration opportunities for remote employees. They’re also encouraged to use our on-site innovation labs for strategy and brainstorming sessions.

Of course, we also must look ahead to ourlong-term future.BlueCross is a technology company, and we believe our future is in the hands of homegrown tech talent. That’s why we’ve created our own talent pipeline with the BlueSky Tennessee Institute. The program, a partnership with East Tennessee State University, offers students interested in tech careers a path to a bachelor’s degree in computing in just over two years with little to no debt. In 2022, we welcomed our first cohort of 30 students.

We see BlueSky Institute graduates as the future leaders of BlueCross, and mentorships with members of our leadership team, as well as enterprise information technology staff, are an integral part of their experience. Our second cohort — an additional 30 students — arrives in August.

At BlueCross, we know the changes we've made — and the aspects of our culture that we've retained — have given us a competitive edge in a difficult market. We also realize we still have work to do to build stronger connections with new remote employees. But that's our commitment, as we want more team members like Sherry Crawford, more remote workers, and more tech-focused individuals that will help us serve our members and fulfill our mission of providing peace of mind through better health.