Olive’s Flexible Work Model, The Grid, Supports Explosive Growth with Team Quadrupling Since its Spring 2020 Launch

As companies across the country announce their return to office plans, Olive, the company delivering innovation to healthcare through artificial intelligence (AI), is reinforcing its commitment to employees to never have to “return” through its novel flexible workforce model — The Grid. Not only has the model empowered employees to work from anywhere, it has also supported unprecedented company growth through broader access to top talent.

“I believe the term ‘remote work’ is dead and companies need to adopt more flexible work models. We’ve seen an enormous positive impact of our Grid model in the year since we launched it. There is no way we could have accessed all the talent we’ve needed to grow without this model,” said Brian Rutkowski, Chief People Officer at Olive. “Not only does this model more successfully support our hiring needs, it’s the right commitment for us to have made to our team members, who are all working hard to transform healthcare.”

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First-of-its-kind workforce model attracts employees from across the country, giving them ultimate flexibility

Since The Grid was launched in May 2020, Olive’s workforce has grown from 230 in less than 20 states to 777 employees across 43 states — with 82% of all hires since launch non-local to Olive’s Hub (headquarters) in Columbus, Ohio. The balance of local versus non-local changed dramatically since before The Grid, when about 75% of employees worked in the Hub full-time. Today, 30% of Olive’s employees are local to the Hub and 70% work either at substations (workplaces where 10 or more employees reside), AlphaSites (onsite AI command centers built within customer health systems), or elsewhere across the country.

Rather than being “in an office” or “out of office” employees are “on The Grid” or “off The Grid.” Being on The Grid means that an employee is actively working from wherever they have chosen and are most effective, be that at home, in a cabin, on the beach, at Olive’s Hub, an Olive workplace, or elsewhere across the country. Being off The Grid means they are not actively working, be it off-hours or vacation time.

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Expanding benefits to support employee productivity and happiness

Olive continues to evolve its benefits to support its distributed team. By offering Marriott Bonvoy points to employees, Olive encourages team members to get away from work to relax, explore or try something new – while the company foots the bill. Through the Olive Getaways program, every employee can receive 200,000 Marriott Bonvoy reward points that can be redeemed for free nights at any Marriott property, airfare, travel experiences, gift cards, events and more.

The company also has a wellness program designed to actively incorporate mental and physical wellness into daily interactions amongst employees. And while many companies now offer unlimited PTO, Olive also has a mandatory PTO policy where employees are required to take at least three days off each quarter. In addition, Olive recently launched “No Meeting Wednesday,” dedicating one day a week for employees to focus and not hold internal meetings as well as get some relief from Zoom fatigue.

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Grid model provides access to top talent, including seasoned leadership

With a distributed workforce and recruiters placed across the country, Olive’s Grid model has not only empowered team members, it has opened access to top talent including product, data and engineering talent, among other roles. This year, Olive anticipates it will more than double its number of employees to approximately 1,200.

In addition, the Grid model bolstered Olive’s leadership, with eight non-Columbus-based senior executives joining since fall 2020. Most recently, Olive added three new executives:

• Carly Eckert as a new GM and Executive Vice President to build out future product capabilities. Carly is a preventive medicine physician, clinical informaticist, and epidemiologist. She has worked in health innovation for six years, including closely with data scientists developing and implementing machine learning solutions in healthcare. Carly has deep experience in Responsible AI and an interest in leveraging data and technology to promote health equity and access to care for underserved populations. Carly will be working on The Grid from North Carolina.
• Geoffrey Martin as Chief Customer Officer. Geoffrey was previously at GE Healthcare where he served in executive positions working across the $18B GE Healthcare technology portfolio including Global CEO of GE Healthcare Partners. His work included driving strategic partnerships, large-scale consulting efforts and helping to bring Command Centers to Healthcare. At Olive, Geoffrey will support the scaling of Olive solutions to customers across the country, pushing hospitals, health systems and payers to the forefront of healthcare innovation. Geoffrey will be working on The Grid from Illinois.
• Rebecca LaFond as Executive Vice President of Customer Experience, to build out the scaling of Olive’s solutions to customers along with Geoffrey. Rebecca joins as part of Olive’s acquisition of Empiric Health, where she was Chief Operating Officer. Prior to that, she held leadership positions in the Clinical Operations practices at Accenture and Huron Healthcare. Rebecca will be working on The Grid from Montana.

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