Managers — better managers — come to understand that continuing to do something one way just because it’s the way the organization has always done it is not one of those best practices we’re always hearing about.
Best practices require an openness to innovation, a willingness to try something new — certainly not for its own sake, as new is not always better. But being a stick in the mud isn’t either.
Five years ago, the COVID-19 pandemic and the need for isolation until vaccines could be developed threw businesses, nonprofits and schools into a panic. How could they continue to do their work if all their staffs, if all their customers, were stuck at home?
And there’s where human ingenuity and the capacity to adapt to change was on display. Who knew that in fact teams of colleagues can actually run complex organizations remotely through Zoom meetings? Whereas six years ago, hardly anyone even knew what a Zoom meeting was.
We have learned from the pandemic, and we’re continuing to take some of those lessons to heart. Lesson No. 1: Just because everyone on a successful team used to come into the office every day doesn’t mean that was the reason the team was successful. In fact, giving team members some flexibility in their schedules, and letting them lose their unproductive, sometimes infuriating commutes to the office, can even make for better results.
Government at all levels was as affected by the pandemic as every other organization. And as the need for social isolation disappeared, it needs to be as open as others to the hybrid schedules many private businesses and nonprofits are offering their employees.
Instead, politics being politics, especially at the federal level there has been a push to force all employees to spend all of their 40 hours a week in the office, apparently for old times’ sake. And certainly to attempt to appear tough on that wimpy working-from-home nonsense.
Objectively, this is the wrong approach to being open to best practices, which are a matter of logic, not vibes. And that’s why, as the nonprofit news site CalMatters reports, “Proponents of remote work for California state employees are celebrating a new state audit that finds having employees work from home could save the state hundreds of millions of dollars in real estate and facilities costs.”
That’s right. It’s not a great time to be invested in commercial real estate. But companies across the Golden State are finding tremendous savings in rent and ownership costs when their employees can work remotely some or all of the time. Why shouldn’t government save the taxpayers money as well?
“Gov. Gavin Newsom appears to have arbitrarily ordered workers back to the office without using specific rationale such as data on worker productivity, according to a newly released report from the California state auditor’s office,” CalMatters adds.
That’s because the governor, like the president, wants to appear to have a get-tough attitude regarding in-person work. Not because it’s logical, or has the data behind it — rather, because it’s the way we always did things before.
But the apolitical State Auditor Grant Parks, who has no need to look macho, says that California could save its taxpayers as much as $225 million per year and lower the need for office space by nearly a third if it asks employees to be in the office two days a week while working remotely three days a week.
“In general, we determined that a one‑size-fits-all approach to telework is counter to state policy and may limit opportunities for significant cost savings,” Parks wrote.
There are many benefits to working in person. You can’t run a DMV office by Zoom. But the state needs to be as open to the many benefits of flexible work options for some of its employees as other organizations are. Happier workers and big savings equals happier taxpayers, too.