THE REMOTE WORK BACKLASH

It feels like just yesterday when, during the pandemic, we were writing about the potential of remote work to make employees happier without diminishing the services they provide. What’s more, it appeared that there was the potential for large amounts of savings when cities, counties and states could cut back at least part of the office space they used.

Yet a growing number of state and local governments have eliminated or drastically reduced the capacity of employees to work from home. Texas, for example, mandated that all employees return to full-time in-office work last March; Indiana did the same in July. Philadelphia was one of the first governments to pull back on remote work, requiring all full-time city employees to return to office about a year ago. Still others have retrenched in a lesser way, allowing employees to work from home for one day a week.

We know there are advantages to spending at least a fair amount of time in the office. Face-to-face contact with co-workers and supervisors can create a sense of teamwork that may be unavailable when other employees are only seen on computer screens. When people work side-by-side, they learn from each other and form friendships. During the pandemic, workplace studies began to suggest that symptoms of burnout were evident among individuals who lacked strong office connections.

But there are also advantages to allowing more workplace flexibility and we’d like to advance an argument that a hybrid environment and a more accepting view of remote work and telework should remain.

There’s plenty of evidence that governments that provide workplace flexibility benefit. In fact, according to a recent GAO report, “The greatest benefit of telework identified by employer stakeholder organizations was the improved ability to recruit and retain workers. Worker stakeholder organizations also identified recruitment and retention as a main benefit of telework. Expert researchers and worker and employer stakeholder organizations said another benefit of telework is that it increases workforce participation of: (1) workers with disabilities, (2) workers who have caregiving responsibilities, (3) older workers, and (4) two-career couples.”

An August 2025 audit from the state of California seems to point to the notion that at least in that state (and we suspect others) the decisions to reduce the amount of allowable time to work from home isn’t based on reasonable evidence.

According to the audit, “The Governor’s April 2024 directive and March 2025 executive order requiring state employees to work more often in the office stated that this approach would enhance collaboration, cohesion, communication, mentorship, and accountability, among other factors they assert to be benefits of in-office work.”

But when the audit office asked the Governors office to provide the research and data it used when developing its back-to-office orders, “it provided us with two articles that support its claims about the benefits of in‑office work. It did not provide us with data it may have used to inform its decisions, such as data specific to State of California employees, their job performance, or the level of service delivery that state agencies and departments provided.

“It also did not appear that the Governor’s Office used valuable information that DGS (Department of General Services) collected from departments about their operations and experiences with telework…

“Further, the Governor’s Office issued the executive order without determining beforehand the amount of office space needed to accommodate employees working in the office four days per week or the associated costs. We found that respondents to our surveys of state departments, as well as state managers and staff, believe that telework is effective and can benefit state departments and employees by lowering costs and the amount of needed office space and improving recruitment and retention without negatively affecting productivity, collaboration, or customer service.”

Though states like California may have been thrust suddenly into work from home policies by COVID, we can’t see the rush in taking them back without adequate research into their benefits and deficits.

There were other reasons why we heard from many that variations on remote work was helpful – and we continue to think they hold true:

·        Reduced commute time. We’ve been working from our home for decades now (and admittedly that wonderful experience may have biased our views toward this issue). But we’ve seen how many hours of each day can be saved when there’s not a commute to and from an office. Even if those extra hours in the day aren’t used to do more work, they have the potential of creating a better work/life balance.

·        Good for the environment. This is related to the previous bulleted item. But it’s abundantly clear that the fewer cars driving people to work, the less emissions to pollute the air.

·        Fewer distractions. Contrary to the fears that people working from home might be distracted by the amenities available there, the fact remains that when employees are working in an office a lot of time is taken up gossiping behind closed doors, or complaining about the supervisor.

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