Texas State Agencies End Remote Work
Texas state agencies are beginning to mandate that state employees return to the office. This follows a directive from Texas Governor Greg Abbot to end the state’s telework policies.
According to the Texas Tribune, Texas Workforce Commission Executive Director Ed Serna wrote in an email, “Teleworking employees must return to the office on or before March 31, 2025.” Other agencies have emailed or directly informed their employees of the return to office requirement.
The governor’s press secretary, Andrew Mahaleris, said, “Texans expect their public servants to be present and engaged in the work on their behalf. With remote federal workers returning to the office where possible, it’s important that state agencies ensure they do the same.”
The state of Texas employs almost 141,000 workers across 114 agencies. In some instances, state agencies had allowed remote work prior to the Covid-19 pandemic which led to significant savings in facility costs. The Governor’s push to end remote work follows President Trump’s executive order to end remote work in the federal government.
Potential Problems
Myko Gedutis, a state union leader, said in response, “The governor’s directing all commissioners to notify employees, everybody’s going to come to the office full-time [but] there’s no effective date. And there’s no real details on how they’re going to sort out office space, since so many offices have consolidated. There’s just a lot of unanswered questions. It’s clearly being driven for political reasons, for political posturing, not for anything else. So I think most folks get that and they understand, but that doesn’t mean that there’s not going to be some serious consequences for this. Turnover is going to be driven up. That means there’s less folks to serve the Texans in their communities.”
Many agencies have previously downsized office space in order to save money. The RTO requirement has left many concerned about the lack of office space.
Ann Bishop, the executive director of the Texas Public Employees Association, told KVUE that hybrid work was common. Employees typically worked three or four days in the office, and one to two days remotely. This allowed “agencies to stagger the workforce that comes into the office.”
According to one agency leader, “We have not seen a dip in operating efficiency with having those employees have a day or two being able to work from home, but we recognize that that the trend is to return to the office. We learned that it was much more efficient to actually deliver telephone counseling services from home. Sure. We also found that we could employ statewide for telephone counselors. Finding them in Austin is nearly impossible, given the marketplace, but if you being able to offer that to individuals outside of the Austin area has been tremendously beneficial for us, and that’s why we have the customer service levels that we do.”
