California state workers are being told to return to offices. Will telework be an option?

Some California state employees love working from home. Others don’t. Regardless of their feelings, increasing numbers of state workers are being given firm dates by which they must show their faces in the office after a year and a half of remote work.

For the Department of Health Care Services, it’s Sept. 1. The State Treasurer’s Office wants all employees to show up at least two days a week starting Sept. 20. The Franchise Tax Board wants employees in the office 20% of the time beginning Oct. 4.

The Sacramento Bee emailed a dozen of the largest state departments with telework-eligible employees to ask about plans for the coming months. Spokespeople for the departments described a range of different paths forward as California’s state government incorporates remote work permanently. They noted their plans could change as the coronavirus situation develops.

The state Human Resources Department has provided general guidance, but is leaving California’s roughly 150 departments, boards, commissions and offices to work out details based on their operational needs.

The result is a growing patchwork of different working conditions that could affect state office culture, hiring and equity from department to department. Department leaders, who traditionally have resisted telework, could ultimately decide how fully state government will embrace it.

“Culture is king,” said Frederick Pilot, a former California state employee who wrote a book called Last Rush Hour: The Decentralization of Knowledge Work in the Twenty-First Century. “And I think that’s a big part of what the challenge is, is a big office-based culture. You can’t turn it on a dime or even in 18 months.”

Gov. Gavin Newsom said in spring 2020 that the state’s shift to telework, necessitated by the arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic, would be permanent.

Newsom’s administration cited savings that could come from reducing lease space, trimming travel spending and cutting costs of printing, postage, utilities and transit subsidies.

In June, the Human Resources Department told department leaders that 75% of state employees who can telework, should telework, and the department issued an emergency telework policy to provide a framework for departments on how to do it.

CalHR director Eraina Ortega told department leaders earlier this year that she expected to finalize a permanent telework policy in the spring, following union negotiations. But the department has not yet published a final policy that would cover things like the provision of laptops and cell phones and work-from-home reimbursements.

“We’re still moving forward with that and I’m optimistic we’ll have that in place soon,” Ortega said last week.

What workers want

Ortega has said a final telework policy would be negotiated with state employee unions. Representatives from some state departments have met with the unions to discuss department-level telework policies, but several union leaders said they haven’t recently engaged in talks over an umbrella policy for all state employees.

Beth Bartel, president of one of Local 1000’s district labor councils, said the union had difficulty getting department leaders to allow telework last spring, even before vaccines.

That changed when CalHR shifted from encouraging telework to insisting on it, Bartel said. Without continued insistence from the Human Resources Department, she said she fears many departments might not fully embrace telework moving forward.

Bartel said employees with chronic health conditions, and those living with immune-compromised family members, are especially concerned about returning to work now, when the virus is still spreading.

“Why are they being required to go into work once a week?” she said.

State law generally requires state government offices to be open from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., necessitating a minimum in-office presence, Ortega said in an email to department leaders last year.

California state office culture

Some department leaders believe every employee needs to spend time in the office to effectively carry out duties, according to department emails.

“While technological and other advancements have improved telework capabilities and the overall telework experience, we feel that it is still crucial that we balance those capabilities with in-person activities for the ideal achievement of collaboration, knowledge transfer, relationship building, training and development, work culture, and other intangibles that have contributed to our history of operational excellence,” Franchise Tax Board spokeswoman Victoria Ramirez said in an email.

Department of Health Care Services spokeswoman Carol Sloan said in an email that while some “production-oriented work” can be done remotely, other tasks require “highly collaborative, complex program development and implementation efforts” that are more effectively completed on-site.

The Department of Social Services hasn’t set a mandatory return-to-office date. In an email, spokesman Scott Murray said the department would shape in-office requirements around business needs, ranging from zero to five days per week in the office.

CalPERS plans to require employees to come in for one day per week in October, two days per week in November and three days per week in December and beyond, but the retirement system is monitoring virus developments and could make adjustments, spokesman Wayne Davis said in an email.

Caltrans is finalizing a telework program this fall for telework-eligible staff, spokesman Matt Rocco said in an email. The department has no department-wide requirement for days in the office; if an employee’s job is suited for telework, they could telework full-time or part-time, Rocco said.

Pilot, the author of the book on remote work, acknowledged that some work can only be done in offices, but rejected arguments about preserving the quality of employees’ work by requiring them to return to offices. He noted the same discussions are unfolding in the private sector.

“I think what you’re seeing there is just the resistance to the virtualization of knowledge work,” he said. “There’s no real rationale, it’s arbitrary.”

Spokespeople from the Department of Motor Vehicles, the California Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Justice, the State Controller’s Office, the California Highway Patrol and the Employment Development Department each said they haven’t yet set firm dates for returning to offices.

Editor’s note: this story was updated Wednesday morning to include information from Caltrans and the California Highway Patrol.

This story was originally published August 18, 2021 at 5:25 AM with the headline "California state workers are being told to return to offices. Will telework be an option?."