Should Utah's state employees return full time to the office? What Gov. Spencer Cox says about changing the work from home policy

Gov. Spencer Cox is about to overhaul Utah’s remote work policy for state employees.

But during his monthly PBS Utah news conference Thursday, the governor stopped short of saying whether he’s going to order state government workers to return to the office full time.

“We’re still working on that and we’ll have more to announce on that soon,” Cox said, adding that since the COVID-19 pandemic, the state has “been bringing more and more people back into the office. So we’ll continue to evaluate where it works and where it doesn’t.”

Approximately 40% of state government’s more than 22,400 employees are eligible to work from home but exactly how many do is not being tracked. Last year, many state workers were told they must be in the office at least two days a week.

“Remote work has its place. But so does being together,” the governor said. “That’s another thing that we learned during the pandemic. It’s not healthy to be isolated. We need that feedback, we need that interaction that comes not just from doing your work.”

He said it’s also important “to say ‘hi’ when you go to the water cooler or the restroom, and being able to get in a room together and just be able to talk and look at each other face-to-face. That matters. So those are the things that we’re working through right now.”

Cox, who once called himself “a televangelist for telework,” promised “there will be more to come.”

Before the pandemic, which had both private and public sector employees working from home, Utah had been encouraging what was known as telework for state employees as a way to save money on building or leasing office space.

Cox, who helmed the state’s pilot teleworking program in 2018 as lieutenant governor, said Thursday it “was very successful. It showed remote work can work if it’s done in the right ways. You don’t just send people home with a computer. It’s much more detailed than that.”

The pilot program showed what’s needed is “incredible oversight. You have to have different training. You have to have an area of your house that is set aside specifically for work so you have an actual workspace that had to be approved and compliant,” he said.

When those criteria are met, the governor said “we see actually an increase in productivity.”

But when the pandemic struck in 2020, “we didn’t have those same things in place for the thousands of workers who were working remotely,” he said. Now when it comes to the state’s telework program, the governor said, “parts of it are working. I think parts of it aren’t.”

The prospect of cutting government costs through shared workspaces and “getting rid of some of the leases that are very expensive” remains a priority, Cox said. State agencies are currently reviewing future space needs.

“What we’re trying to do is to figure out, how do we save taxpayer money by using less space and how do we make sure that the employees that are working on behalf of the taxpayers are efficient and productive,” he said, while “giving them as many opportunities as possible.”