In the fall of 2018, Utah’s state government launched a pilot program aimed at encouraging what was known as telecommuting to save money on new building construction and leased office space. Within months, it was seen as such a success that Gov. Spencer Cox, then lieutenant governor, declared himself “a televangelist for telework.”
That fervor only increased after the COVID-19 pandemic that started in 2020 made working from home a default for employees everywhere. Utah was seen as well-positioned to handle the transition from state employees reporting to an office every day to handling government business from their homes.
Yet over the past year, there are Utah state agencies pulling back on remote work, telling employees “it is time for us to move to a more sustainable model of teleworking.” Many workers have been told they must come into the office at least two days a week, while supervisors are expected to be there at least three.
What triggered the shift in the state’s approach to remote work is not clear.
Asked about the governor’s position on remote work by state employees and whether he eventually will expect state workers to be back in the office full time, Cox spokesman Robert Carroll indicated more changes could be coming.
“The pandemic dramatically accelerated the adoption of widespread remote work. We know that our employees value the flexibility of remote work and we want to retain some of that flexibility. We also know that there is a great benefit to the state and the people we serve when employees are able to collaborate, problem solve and team build together and in person,” Carroll said in a statement.
“As the workplace continues to stabilize from the pandemic, and as the (governor’s) second term begins, we have an opportunity to reevaluate the way we manage our state workforce to ensure that we are providing the highest level of service to all Utahns,” the statement concluded.
The state of Utah’s Taylorsville campus stands on Friday, Jan. 10, 2025. | Isaac Hale, Deseret News
Looking to ‘balance’ more in-office work
Officials from the state Department of of Government Operations that includes the Division of Human Resources Management see the pendulum swinging back towards working in the office.
“I think what we’re trying to do is find a balance,” said Marilee Richins, the government operations department’s deputy director. Richins, who ran the telework pilot project, said state agencies “have missed the collaboration and the value that comes from employees experiencing each other in person.”
Still, the days when most state employees work solely in the office “are gone,” she said, noting a lesson learned from the pilot program is that “it’s very difficult to have just blanket policies” when it comes to remote work. “I think teleworking in some form is here to stay.”
Exactly what that may end up looking like remains to be seen.
“I wouldn’t say we’re saying no” to remote work, Richins said. “We’re trying to get all the benefits that happen when you interact in person with your colleagues and we’re trying to get the benefits and the job satisfaction that comes when you get to work at home. We want it all.”
Marvin Dodge, the department’s executive director, said the state is following the private sector’s lead.
“Certainly, we’re paying attention to the world around us. Because even many of the tech firms have brought their folks back several days a week,” Dodge said, adding, “that’s triggered lot of conversation on the state side with my cabinet colleagues and I for bringing folks back, not necessarily full time in all instances but at least to have in the office a couple of days a week.”
State agency heads are also feeling pressure to keep offices filled with employees so as to not lose out as a new master plan is being developed for allocating space in state-owned buildings like the State Office Building in Taylorsville as well as leased facilities. Today, giving up space is seen as limiting their future growth.
The state of Utah’s Taylorsville campus stands on Friday, Jan. 10, 2025. | Isaac Hale, Deseret News
Remote work seen as ‘a privilege, not an entitlement’
“Telework is a privilege, not an entitlement,” according to a list of frequently asked questions for employees provided by the government operations department. Those FAQs warns that long-term decisions about state office space are being made now, and “if we give up all the space currently available, we tie the hands” of future bosses and employees.
That tone is very different from the voluntary “Utah Works” pilot program, described in a 2019 progress report out of the governor’s budget office as modernizing the workplace by “managing performance over presence” by setting a minimum of three days a week of working from home.
The expectation then, state employees were told, was for “remote workers to be out of the office a majority of the time.”
In July 2019, the pilot was touting a 23% increase in productivity from the 135 employees chosen to participate and Cox announced another 2,555 state government workers, about 30% of those eligible, would be able to work remotely within 18 months. The then-lieutenant governor saw the program as a way to help meet the administration’s goal of adding rural jobs.
However, by the time January 2021 rolled around, the world was immersed in the pandemic and approximately 40% of state employees were working remotely. Soon after being sworn in as governor, Cox issued an executive order requiring all state agencies to review every job “to determine whether it can be performed remotely.”
Then, the governor’s push for remote work went beyond dealing with the deadly virus.
Cox cited a long list of benefits, including curbing commuting’s significant contribution to poor air quality and road conditions, supporting families by limiting the time and money state employees spend getting to and from work and anticipated cost savings from needing less office space.
“Utah faces unprecedented growth in the coming years and an increasing demand for government services,” the executive order declared, predicting that expanding remote work would allow the state to save an estimated $13 million a year by giving up leased office space plus an estimated $300 million in new construction costs over the next decade.
A “Remote Work Guide” published in June 2021 intended to spell out post-pandemic expectations set a target for state government agencies of having half of their eligible employees work remotely for more than half of the week, meaning they’d be scheduled to report to the office no more than two days a week.
Employees walk toward their cars on the state of Utah’s Taylorsville campus on Friday, Jan. 10, 2025. | Isaac Hale, Deseret News
How many Utah state employees work from home?
Now, though, the state seems to be moving in a different direction. It’s up to each state agency to set a remote work policy, and no one appears to be collecting detailed information on what they’re all doing.
Richins said among the state’s some 22,400 executive branch employees, 8,890 have jobs where they can participate in the telework program two to three days a week. There are 3,982 jobs that “could be full-time telework, meaning they never actually come into a state office building. They could be rural or they could be full-time telework,” she said.
The actual number of state workers who do work from home part or full time apparently hasn’t been tracked since the pilot program. Richins said some state agencies may be monitoring how many employees are working from home, but “this has been kind of a moving target.”
There are 8,806 employees in urban areas who regularly mark “TW” code on their time cards to indicate work from home, she said, although there may be others not reporting it properly. There are 2,403 employees who live in rural parts of the state or otherwise always work remotely. The exact number of rural employees is not known, but they make up the bulk of the group, Richins said.
She said she has been in touch with every agency about remote work because of ongoing efforts to plan for future space needs.
“We’ve got to know what they’re going to do,” Richins said. Only the Department of Workforce Services is continuing to keep many of its employees located around the state working from home full time, she said. “They have not made any widespread effort to bring folks back.”
The communications director for the state’s workforce services department, Christina Davice, said in a statement more than half of the department’s employees work from home.
“The Utah Department of Workforce Services employs about 2,100 people statewide, and approximately 55% participate in remote work. Our department provides many services to Utahns via phone and online, which allows some employees, including those living in rural areas of the state, to work remotely,” Davice said.
Other state agencies have embraced a “hybrid model” over the past year, requiring employees to return to the office at least a couple of days a week. But that may change, Richins said, because “most of the agencies are very much in the process currently of developing their policies.”
Reactions to Utah’s remote work policies
While there was concern about requiring a return to the office, Richins said the impact on employee retention has “actually been fairly negligible.” Fewer than 20 of the 1,400 or so government operations department employees chose to quit rather than accept a hybrid work schedule, she said.
The reason many are sticking with state employment despite having to be back in the workplace several days a week, Richins believes, is “because the private sector is really going in that direction as well. So it’s harder to find jobs in the private sector that are completely remote.”
When the state’s pilot telework program was launched nearly seven years ago, she said there were government employees who balked at spending too much time away from the office. That resulted in supervisors having to spell out that participants had to work from home at least three days a week.
“That was a fascinating experience. We had people who only wanted to work from home one day a week. We’re like, ‘No, we need you to work at least three days at home so we can really judge the impact of this,’” Richins said, adding she was stunned at the reaction.
“I did not expect the response. We had employees that had a difficult time making that transition,” she said, expressing concerns about how the pilot program would affect their career progression. Some questioned whether they would remain relevant after giving up a desk decorated with family pictures to share a work space.
“Then we had COVID and then everyone went home and some of those concerns went away because everyone was teleworking,” Richins said, adding, “For some employees, it’s been very difficult to come back. For other employees, they have expressed gratitude and said, ‘We probably wouldn’t have come back unless you asked us to, but this is so much better.’”
What the Utah Public Employees Association says about returning to the office
Jessica Bruner, director of the Utah Public Employees Association that represents state workers, She said the labor organization, which does not have collective bargaining power, “got a ton of emails and calls” from workers worried about losing their work-life balance when they were told last year they’d have to return to the office part time.
Bruner said she expects the push to return to the office to expand beyond requiring two days a week, maybe even to full time.
“I could see them extending it to that. I don’t know how quickly that would happen, but I do them headed that way,” she said, adding that conversations are underway with state human resources officials and legislators about preserving the option of working from home.
Bruner said she’s not aware of any pending legislation on telework. In 2011, the Utah Legislature reversed former Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr.’s four-day work week for state employees, intended to save money by keeping government offices open Monday through Thursday, from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m.
State rules already make it clear it’s up to state agencies to determine who gets what employees see as a benefit, Bruner said.
“We understand that not every employee has the opportunity to work remotely,” she said. “But there are a lot of employees who do have the opportunity and can work well from home. We want to work to get them that opportunity to still have that a few days a week instead of coming in the office all the time. I think a lot of people can do their jobs well and adequately from home.”