The trend of working from home has claimed another office building.
Independent Health is putting one of its buildings on its Amherst campus up for sale as the insurer evaluates its long-term office space needs.
Effective Feb. 26, President and CEO Dr. Michael W. Cropp will remain CEO and Chief Financial Officer Jim Dunlop will be elevated to the role of president.
The building, at 150 Essjay Drive in Centerpointe Business Park, has an asking price of $4.9 million. Independent Health bought the property in 2011 for $3.4 million.
Independent Health owns four other office buildings in the campus. Dr. Michael Cropp, the CEO, and Shaun Charley, vice president of facilities management, said 150 Essjay was considered most expendable because it is located farther from the rest of the buildings, and a relatively small number of employees are still working there. Those employees will move to other Independent Health offices.
Independent Health is putting its building at 150 Essjay Drive in Centerpointe Business Park in Amherst on the market for $4.9 million.
Joshua Bessex
For a potential buyer, the 35,000-square-foot office building is in a visible spot, across from a Wegmans supermarket and near Sheridan Drive, with ample on-site parking. âIn this entire development, there are very, very few properties available,â Cropp said.
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While some employers have shifted toward directing their employees to return to the office for a specified number of days per week, Independent Health has operated with a primarily remote workforce of about 1,200 people since March 2020. The company has made renovations to its offices to adapt to those changes.
Dr. Michael Cropp, CEO of Independent Health inside one of the hybrid conference rooms on the Independent Health campus in Amherst.
Joshua Bessex
âWhen the pandemic hit and people were working from home, we recognized that there was tremendous appreciation for the ability to work from home,â Cropp said. âAnd we recognized it would be difficult to bring people back on campus.
âWe made the conscious decision that we were not going to force people to come back to campus, but that we were going to set up space that would make it conducive for them to want to come back for team meetings, and where they could come on site periodically and really benefit from the space and the interaction that the space enabled.â
As a result of the renovations, Independent Health has more space for employee collaboration and training, creating more appealing settings for team members to gather, Charley said. The company also has other places where employees can come in to work, from cubicles to more informal settings.
While Independent Health continues to offer employees the flexibility of working from home, the company also wants to protect its corporate culture, Cropp said. Part of that approach is ensuring managers are maintaining good connections with employees, even if they donât see each other in person very often.
âI think weâre still growing our capabilities there,â Cropp said. âItâs been a point of emphasis for us for the last year to bring those skills to the manager, to get them feeling more and more comfortable.â
Dr. Michael Cropp, CEO of Independent Health, discusses how they have made changes across the office to better serve a hybrid remote work environment.
Independent Health and its family of companies have a combination of owned and leased office space. Its self-funded services company, Nova Healthcare Administrators, recently exited office space at 6400 Main St. after its lease expired, and moved into the companyâs 300 Essjay building on the Centerpointe campus.
Aside from the building now on the market, Independent Health on its campus has four office buildings adding up to a combined 162,000 square feet of office space.
Charley said the company has had a good response from employees in the renovated space, which keeps pace with how people are working now.
âI think the greatest benefit weâve found from the (renovated) space is that people really enjoy coming back, and the ability to interact and to do it on a flexible schedule,â Cropp said.
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