BOISE, Idaho — This story originally appeared in the Idaho Press.
Since the beginning of the pandemic, employers across the Treasure Valley have grappled with how to balance the demands of their work with employee desire to work from home.
What may have started as a mandated practice of the pandemic soon became popular because of the convenience it offers to employees.
But roles range from those that can be performed at home, to those that can't. And workers have not all taken to remote work with the same level of enthusiasm.
The Idaho Press caught up with a handful of Treasure Valley employers to learn what remote work policies they have devised to meet the moment.
CITY OF BOISE
When the pandemic arrived in the spring of 2020, city of Boise employees began working from home almost overnight, said Sarah Borden, the city’s human resources director. Now, the city has settled on a hybrid program that identifies which roles can be remote and lets departments cater schedules to both the desires of employees and department needs.
“We’ve found out, as other employers have, that employees really enjoy having that hybrid work option,” said Borden, who started in her role in early 2021.
Though not all employees want to work remotely, 68% of the roles in the city are remote-eligible, Borden said.
Some employees have shared that they want to work in-person because they are single and work is where they enjoy good social time, Borden said. On the flip side, for married employees whose spouse works from home, working in person can allow for better focus, she said.
Departments also vary on how often they need employees to be in person. For example, some departments that are more public-facing have devised schedules that allow each employee to work from home one day per week on a rotating basis, Borden said.
Other roles, such as payroll personnel, can do their work mostly from home, if they choose, Borden said.
“It’s based on the work that needs to get done and our need to be present with each other, and with our community members,” she said.
Defining which roles are eligible for remote work based on whether it can be accomplished remotely has also helped avoid disgruntled employees, Borden said.
“It’s really based on the work that needs to get done," Borden said. "That’s the driver and that kind of takes some of the emotion out of it, I think.”
ST. LUKE’S HEALTH SYSTEM
Before the onset of the pandemic, the only St. Luke’s Health System employees who were eligible to work from home were a small subset of fully remote employees, said Taylor Reeves, the hospital’s public relations coordinator, via email. The hospital’s policy now includes categories for fully remote workers, as well as hybrid workers, Reeves said.
“As a health care organization, our work is heavily focused on the hands-on delivery of exceptional patient care which typically requires our team members to conduct their work in a traditional work environment,” Reeves said.
“For some roles that support the delivery of patient care in an indirect manner, the traditional work environment has undergone extraordinary change and full or partial remote work is rapidly gaining broad acceptance with the high adoption and significant advancements in technology and work collaboration tools.”
Working from home can allow people to feel more creative, which can lead to higher personal satisfaction, which in turn can lead to better work-life “synergy,” and desire to stay in the role, Reeves said.
“St. Luke’s has evolved our remote work strategy to meet the changing needs of our workforce which has allowed us to recruit and retain diverse, top-level talent; provide a safe work environment; increase team member satisfaction; and optimize our physical space needs in an increasingly competitive employment market,” Reeves said.
IDAHO POWER
Before the pandemic began, Idaho Power allowed for occasional remote work on a case-by-case basis, said Sarah Griffin, the company’s vice president of human resources. But like other employers, Idaho Power employees who could work from home at the beginning of the pandemic did, said Sven Berg, communications specialist with the company.
In the past six months, the company decided to move to a one-day-a-week in-person work policy, he said.
“The idea was to ease us back into more of an office presence,” Berg said.
Now, any employee with the ability to work from home can do so up to two days per week, Berg said.
In addition, certain roles are now eligible for four non-consecutive weeks of remote work, Griffin said. This could come in handy if an employee wants to work remotely during a vacation, or if they are working on a special project that would benefit from having a full week of remote time to work on it, Griffin said.
Employees eligible for remote work include office personnel, such as IT and human resources employees, Berg said.
“Obviously, if somebody runs into a power pole and knocks it over, you can’t fix that from home,” Berg said.
Employees who need to be in the field and employees who work in an office but use specialized monitoring equipment are some examples of roles that are not eligible to work from home, Berg said.
About 40% of the company’s workforce is eligible for some remote work, Griffin said.
The pandemic has highlighted differences in roles, with not all employees able to work remotely, Griffin said.
“I think it’s human nature to look over the fence,” Griffin said. “I do think there has been some acknowledgment that, ‘hey, it would be nice if I had that flexibility’” from employees whose positions are not conducive to remote work, Griffin said. But roles range widely in the benefits they provide, with some providing overtime, and some with a structure that might make it easier to leave the work at work, she said. Overall, there has not been tremendous pushback on remote work policies, she said.
How much employees like remote work varies, Griffin said. Some feel extremely productive at home, while others realized they were working way more than usual because they could roll out of bed and start their workday without having to commute, she said. They realized having some separation between the office and home was beneficial, she said.
MICRON
For hardware manufacturer Micron, many roles at the company involve hands-on research and development work done inside labs, explained April Arnzen, chief people officer for the company. Yet the pandemic has made the company explore its remote work offerings.
“In lots of industries and remote work, especially in tech, certainly the work-from-anywhere phenomenon that happened throughout COVID has really changed the way companies think and how they approach their workforce and the footprint of their workforce,” Arnzen said.
For Micron, this meant considering a multi-pronged approach to its remote work policies that accounts for different kinds of work. For example, hands-on, research-heavy workers may work largely in person, but some of their work may include writing lab reports, which can be done from home, Arnzen said. If employees don’t do hands-on manufacturing work, they could choose to work from home.
The company opted to develop a “virtual days program,” in which employees have a set number of days they can work from home per year, Arnzen said.
“It’s not part of their set schedule,” she said. “They can use them whenever and wherever it’s appropriate.”
Other employees operate under a hybrid model that is part of their set schedule, working onsite three days of the week, and offsite two, Arnzen said. This can include up to 12 days per year working from anywhere. For example, if a family is headed to Florida for vacation, and the employee wants to work some of those days, they could. The limit on days worked out-of-state is due to tax considerations, Arnzen said.
The company also just announced that some roles will be allowed to work 100% remotely, she said.
Who wants to work from home varies from person to person. For example, recent college grads have been eager to work on campus at least some of the time, Arnzen said.
“They don’t want to work fully remote, but we also know others, based on their life situation, may want to work fully remote,” she said. “So we’re tailoring this program to really appeal to a wide audience and make sure that they’re feeling included.”
This story originally appeared in the Idaho Press. Read more at IdahoPress.com
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