Editorial: Design strategy for teleworking

Teleworking has set down deep roots among office workers across the country, at first by necessity to avoid COVID-19. Increasingly, as the infection surges subside, working from home has become more a preference than a mandate.

In some cases, employers have realized savings by moving to a smaller space and deploying workers to home offices. In others, it’s the staffers who made the choice, either because their current bosses offered that option to enable greater work-life flexibility, or because they found a new employer who would.

For Hawaii, with its many government workers, figuring out the new landscape is a large-scale project, one already involving the public-employee unions. During the pandemic, many offices, both public and private, had to shut down for weeks or months. Temporary agreements with remote-working guidelines directed government agencies through the worst of the health crisis.

Now the Legislature, through Senate Bill 2940, is driving a critical conversation about how to create a practical state policy on teleworking for the long term. This policy will affect state executive-branch offices, excluding the University of Hawaii, the state Department of Education and the Hawaii Health Systems Corp., each of which has its own policymaking body.

The policy is sure to evolve over the coming years, but it’s important for the state to acknowledge the heightened role teleworking already is playing and to get a basic framework in place now.

The need for distance-working options is likely to persist beyond the expiration of the state’s emergency order for COVID-19, given the unpredictable twists and turns the pandemic already has presented.

And even when there’s no longer a public-health concern, the simple fact is that teleworking has been shown largely to succeed, thanks to new technology and two years of practice. People in many workplaces now expect to see teleworking as a standard option.

The original bill aimed to follow federal government legislation, enacted in 2010, to establish telework policies. But in the course of hearings, Ryker Wada, director of the state Department of Human Resources Development (DHRD), told state senators that DHRD had executed a telework memorandum of understanding with the Hawaii Government Employees Association, also in 2010.

The guidelines were broadly implemented in a supplemental agreement when the statewide coronavirus lockdown shuttered most offices providing government services in March 2020, Wada said in prepared remarks to the Senate Ways and Means and Government Operations committees. He added that the pact will remain in effect at least until February 2023.

The bill’s purpose now is to establish a state telework policy based on the existing guidelines, which are being updated by DHRD for approval through collective bargaining with public-employee unions. The department would be required to publish the updated guidelines and provide for training programs on best practices for teleworking and cybersecurity.

Even with a template in place, there are principles that should be top of mind as rules for public workers are revised. Some of these already have found acceptance: There are UH guidelines, for example, that bear consideration.

One is the goal to support flexibility. Of course, this includes the flexibility a worker gains by having an alternative to the office commute.

But it’s also a fact that teleworking isn’t the best option for everyone. Some workers prefer to come into the office anyway, and some don’t work that productively at home. There are kids, distractions, the lack of adequate equipment and tools.

And let’s face it: There are staffers who simply work better under in-person supervision.

So it needs to be a discretionary condition, with management retaining some control over how best to deliver the service required.

“Telework is not an employee entitlement or a benefit, and does not alter the terms and conditions of employment with the University,” reads one section from the UH Telework Policy and Guidelines. “Campuses and offices may permit teleworking upon request by an employee; however, whether to approve a request is solely a management prerogative.”

That sounds about right.

All of that said, smart managers can’t afford to abuse that discretion, especially not if they want to keep a valued employee, or lure one who otherwise might look elsewhere for a job. The applicant has some bargaining power in this job market.

According to a new Pew Research Center survey, 6 in 10 of U.S. workers who say their jobs can mainly be done at home are still working from home all or most of the time. Now, more of them say they’re doing it because they want to, not because they have to.

It’s a new reality, one to which more employers should adapt. And adaptation is a good thing, as long as this wider array of choices can be offered while still delivering on what business — or government — has promised.