Texas senators discuss more work-from-home flexibility for state employees

AUSTIN (Nexstar) — Holly Montoya is one in every of many who commutes from out of city to work in Austin every day. For her, the price of hire in Austin and surrounding areas isn’t reasonably priced, so she drives about an hour-and-a-half day-after-day from Temple.

Montoya’s job shifted to distant in the course of the pandemic and she or he simply returned to the workplace in April. Between surging fuel costs and site visitors from extra folks returning to the workplace, she misses that flexibility.

“Even when it was like a hybrid factor — like if it was like three days within the workplace two days at house — that may save me a ton of cash,” she mentioned.

These are a number of the the reason why members of the Texas Senate Enterprise & Commerce Committee mentioned either side of teleworking for state staff in a gathering on Wednesday.

Whereas Montoya isn’t a state worker, researchers who testified say even having extra state staff work remotely might assist cut back site visitors.

“With the expansion that’s anticipated in Texas with a inhabitants of nearing 50 million within the coming a long time, a few of these issues shall be amplified,” mentioned David Schrank — a senior analysis scientist on the Texas A&M Transportation Institute.

Schrank mentioned a 2015 evaluation discovered about 19% of staff in central Austin had been state staff. He famous on holidays when state staff had been off work, there was a “noticeable distinction” in site visitors on these days. The conclusion — state staff had been a consider Austin’s site visitors congestion.

A number of heads of Texas companies informed lawmakers about what forms of staff had been in a position to make money working from home in the course of the pandemic and whether or not they had been absolutely again within the workplace or a mixture of hybrid choices.

The Texas Workforce Fee was unable to supply knowledge to KXAN about what number of state staff are nonetheless working solely or partially remotely. Nonetheless, TWC government director Ed Serna offered figures to lawmakers about its company.

Serna mentioned about 68% of TWC staff are working remotely or teleworking not less than two days every week, and it’s had extra advantages than lowering commute instances for employees.

“We believed that it might be an amazing recruiting and retention device for TWC, particularly distant work,” he mentioned. “Austin is changing into rather more troublesome for us to compete with the personal sector with regard to wage and advantages.”

He mentioned after providing extra everlasting telework flexibility, the TWC began seeing extra candidates for jobs which might be usually onerous for the company to fill.

“Once we discuss to these people, what we’re really listening to from them is it’s not due to our pay but it surely’s due to the way in which we’ve used telework and the truth that we permit telework as a lot as we do,” Serna mentioned.

Whether or not or not laws will come from this interim committee assembly is unclear. Some company leaders famous the fact that working from house is unimaginable for a big a part of the Texas workforce.

Cecile Erwin Younger, the chief commissioner for the Texas Well being and Human Companies Fee, famous it’s unimaginable for her company to have a uniform teleworking coverage for her staff.

“Telework isn’t applicable for employees who present direct care to purchasers, keep amenities or present companies that can not be carried out remotely,” she mentioned.

Whereas it’s not attainable for everybody, lawmakers expressed an openness to permitting it for the forms of jobs that take advantage of sense in the long run.

“It doesn’t make numerous sense — if we all know how costly the actual property in and round downtown Austin is — for us to have state companies that don’t essentially should be in downtown Austin if they are often simply as efficient in Spherical Rock or Kyle or Buda or San Antonio, New Braunfels,” mentioned Sen. José Menéndez, D-San Antonio.