Whither Telework, Post Pandemic?

• Author: Barrett, Katherine
• Position: IN PRACTICE: PERSPECTIVE

After the coronavirus abates, will public employees continue to labor at home? It seems likely.

There has been a great deal of discussion about the so-called "new normal" that will take hold once science has thoroughly beaten the pandemic to a pulp. One of the biggest questions: Will city, county, and state employees continue to do a fair amount--if not all--of their work from home instead of the office? The answer has the potential to change the very nature of public-sector work.

Some background:

In 2019, according to the Center for State and Local Government Excellence, only about 19 percent of US localities had any kind of work-from-a-distance program in place. Certainly, there are some jobs that could not qualify for this arrangement. One obvious example is the fire fighter corps. No one can put out a fire across town with a hose plugged into a backyard faucet, right behind the rose bushes.

For years, we have been reading and writing articles about telework as a technique to help state and local governments work more effectively and efficiently. As long as ten years ago, the federal government threw its weight behind the concept when it passed the Telework Enhancement Act of 2010. According to the US Department of Personnel Management, the act was described as a key factor in the federal government's ability to achieve greater flexibility in managing its workforce through the use of telework. While the act did result in some success stories, barriers cropped up, too, according to the Government Accountability Office, including insufficient training, managerial resistance, and absence of documentation.

At the local level, telework has gained even less traction. For example, the City of Sacramento, California, has had some policies in place for telework since 1995, but until recently, it didn't have any "long-term commitment to widespread or even significant usage," said Maria MacGuniga, Sacramento's chief information officer.

Oh, how the world has changed.

With the arrival of COVID-19 and the necessity for social distancing, government functions simply can't come to a halt. The only practical solution has been to require that many employers provide an atmosphere conducive to budget analysts plunking away at laptops located in their basements or HR officials overseeing entities' personnel policies from their kitchen tables.

It's not as though this has been an easy transition for everyone. One of the biggest obstacles, as you would expect...