Pa. state government employees are slowly returning to the office after pandemic year

The pace of the return to the office is starting to pick up across Pennsylvania’s state government offices but signs point to a more liberal use of teleworking as a side effect of the covid-19 era.

Remote working could be here to stay in some state agencies.

A year of telecommuting and Zoom calls has left some agencies thinking that more work days going forward may not need to be done inside a government office building.

Now that Gov. Tom Wolf has announced the lifting of his covid-19 mitigation orders with the exception of the mask order in less than two weeks, pressure continues to build from Republican lawmakers to get government employees back to the office.

But it remains unclear what this relaxing of restrictions will mean for state government employees, particularly those under the governor’s jurisdiction. Some have been teleworking for a portion or all of the past year.

A spokesman for the Wolf administration said they were working on responding to questions about agencies’ return to office plans but didn’t have any information to share as of Tuesday afternoon.

However, during a March budget hearing in the House, Wolf’s Budget Secretary Jen Swails shined a positive light on the teleworking arrangement that has been in place for state government agencies.

“I think there’s an opportunity to continue having people work from home. I think it helps morale, in fact, and retention in some areas that were difficult to retain employees,” Swails said. “When you’re looking at private sector, they have that option. Many people, even if it’s for a pay increase, will not give up that flexibility that they have from working from home to take a job that they have to come into the office every day.”

House Republican lawmakers, however, remain unconvinced this practice should be here to stay.

They question the productivity levels of some state employees and complain their offices have been inundated during the pandemic with requests for assistance in dealing with state government agencies who have been non-responsive or slow to respond.

“Many legislators and their staff, county officials, municipal officials and taxpayers have reported that communication with agencies is the worst it’s ever been,” said Rep. Lynda Schlegel Culver, R-Northampton County, said during that budget hearing.

“While work-at-home policy I think is reasonable from a public health standpoint, I think there have been concerns raised about response times increasing and people not being answered at all. Can you maybe shed some light on me why it’s taking longer to answer e-mails and phone calls?”

Swails responded, “I’m not sure.”

There’s no place like home

Just like some workers in the private sector, some state government employees have gotten out of the habit of driving to the office and dressing in something other than jeans or sweatpants.

As a result, a good chunk of them don’t want to return to that old routine on a full-time basis.

A survey by McKinsey & Co., a management consulting company, found just 37% of workers prefer to return full-time to their workplace in the post-pandemic era, compared to 62% pre-covid-19.

Instead, more than half said they would prefer a more flexible hybrid work schedule where they work at least three days from home.

The survey also found that in the current labor market, some employers may have little choice but to offer that flexibility. More than a quarter of those surveyed reported that they would consider switching employers if their organization returned to fully on-site work.

A PennLive survey of state government agencies indicated they will not be engaging in one practice being seen in the private sector: offering incentives to lure people back to the office.

“No,” said Treasury spokesman Erik Arneson. “And none are planned.”

“We are not providing incentives to return to work,” said Senate Democratic spokeswoman Brittany Crampsie.

“Caucus staff is anxious to return to offices and there’s no need to offer additional incentives,” said House Democratic spokesman Bill Patton in an email.

Patton said some House Democratic employees may have construed a $1,000 increase in their base salary that began showing up in their pay last week as a return-to-the-office incentive, since it came around the same time as the caucus announced plans to begin bringing employees back to the office, starting May 24.

They intend to have staff work alternating schedules that will have a limited number reporting to the office on certain days and teleworking on others to allow for social distancing to be maintained, he said.

“This is the first step to getting staff back in offices daily while adhering to [Centers for Disease Control] and [Pennsylvania Department of Health] guidelines for safety and well being,” Patton said.

The $1,000 salary adjustment to be distributed over 26 pay cycles went to caucus staffers who had been employed as of July 1 and had their pay frozen last year due to budgetary constraints, despite having “to work extremely hard under very difficult circumstances, particularly the district staff that were dealing with loads of unemployment complaints and businesses trying to get open,” Patton said. Caucus officials described it as an equity adjustment for the 2020 salary freeze.

Additionally, Patton said Democratic staffers employed by the caucus as of April 1 received a 2.5% pay raise on top of that salary adjustment. But he insisted none of those decisions were intended to be payments to get people to return to the office.

House Republicans had some staffers in departments with close quarters alternate between working in the office and at home to accommodate social distancing when the House was not in session, but that has since ended, said Jason Gottesman, a caucus spokesman.

For the most part, House Republicans required staff to report to their office since last April. Gottesman said the exceptions were when employees teleworked for health or child care reasons, although he said the temporary child care exception will end in the beginning of June.

Over in the Senate, Erica Clayton Wright, a spokeswoman for the GOP caucus, said most or all employees who currently work at home will return to the office by June 1, if they have not done so already.

Meanwhile, Crampsie said Senate Democrats are still in the process of developing plans for a safe return for their staffers.

Outside of the Legislature

Statewide row offices are offering up their own mixed bag of work rules.

The state Auditor General’s office has employees alternating between reporting to the office and teleworking while awaiting direction from the Wolf administration about when a full return to its headquarters in the Finance Building is appropriate, said spokesman Gary Miller.

The treasury office plans to continue its telework arrangement for a significant majority of its employees through at least June 30, said Arneson, its spokesman. However, some employees have been coming into treasury offices throughout the pandemic, he said.

“We’ve surveyed our employees and managers about future plans,” Arneson said. “Discussions about any potential changes on July 1 or later, including a thorough review of those survey results, is underway. We are working methodically, with the two primary goals being to ensure employee safety and to ensure that there is no disruption in service to the public.”

At the Attorney General’s office, a limited numbers of employees have been working in the office for the past year to ensure social distancing. Spokeswoman Molly Stieber said the office has had a telework policy in place since 2019 but an update is planned in light of the experience from this past year.

Meanwhile, other agencies also show signs that teleworking could become more commonplace going forward.

At the State Employees’ Retirement System, spokeswoman Pam Hile said, “Following the guidance of the Governor’s Office of Administration, SERS, like many other state agencies, has been working on its plan for future telework operations. We anticipate having our plan finalized for implementation sometime in July.”

Over at the Pennsylvania Higher Education Assistance Agency, spokesman Keith New said Labor Day is targeted as the date when in-office operations return to normal.

However, “normal” may look different there as well, said PHEAA spokesman Keith New.

“As many have learned, workplace norms have evolved over the last year as many employees successfully transitioned to a work-from-home situation,” New said. “We are currently working through various scenarios to determine what normalized operations will look like at PHEAA post-pandemic balancing the needs of both customers and employees relative to our business lines.”

*This story has been updated to reflect a clarification about the $1,000 salary adjustment that some House Democratic staffers received.