Chester County adopts formal remote work policy

WEST CHESTER >> Three years after the COVID-19 pandemic changed the practices of large and small employers regarding whether to allow their employees to work from home, the Chester County commissioners have approved a policy setting in writing a formal set of rules for the future of remote work.

Last week, the three-member board voted unanimously to adopt an overall plan that allows, but does not require, that certain positions will be given the option of working off-site 100 percent of the time or having a flexible arrangement that sees them in the office for a certain number of days each week.

And those whose job functions do not permit such an arrangement — sheriff’s deputies at the county Justice Center, correctional officers at the Chester County Prison, telecommunicators at the county Department of Emergency Services, nurses and aides at Pocopson Home, for example — will be given additional benefits, in the form of two more days off a year, as “soft compensation” for their on-site requirements.

The policy essentially sets down what had been happening in practice in the months following the March 2020 order that all but essential staff work remotely, and follows a trend across the country. It also attempts to bridge a gap between those who want to work from home, and those who don’t or can’t.

In an interview Thursday, the day after the commissioners adopted the remote and telework policy, chief County Administrator Bobby Kagel sat down with Deputy County Administrator Erik Walschburger and county Human Resources Director Michelle Gallo and discusses the origins of the policy and how they anticipated it would work.

Kagel suggested that the impetus behind the new set of rules was a sense of the adage, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”

“Everything shut down in March 2020,” he said in the interview. “We sent everybody home and told folks they had to work from home if they could. Even

The policy essentially sets down what had been happening in practice in the months following the March 2020 order that all but essential staff work remotely, and follows a trend across the country.

when things started opening back up, everyone was still encouraged to do remote work. Those were the instructions from the state: While restrictions were being relaxed, they didn’t want mass gatherings of people doing things.”

County government is among Chester County’s Top Ten employers.

“And the longer we did it, the more we saw it as just working,” Kagel said. “The reality is, four years ago if you had said county government is going to be in a hybrid work environment, you’d have been laughed out of the room. But it was organic, it just worked.”

When the state and county’s COVID-19 numbers leveled off, there came a point in 2022 when people could come back, he said. “But the staff said to us, ‘Why?’ And the commissioners and everybody just looked at each other and said, ‘Well, it’s been going so well.

“There hasn’t been an interruption in the delivery of service or the quality of service being provided to the citizens of the county,” he insisted. “So how do we tell people, ‘You’ve done this successfully for the last year but now its all going to go away and you’ve got to come back.”

Kagel said the county’s strategic plan, “Managing for Results,” collects data on how well each department is providing services to the county’s residents and taxpayers. Since 2020, there has been no appreciable drop in accomplishing the tasks of government.

“There is certainly an aspect that no one is calling up and complaining, or we are not getting the complaints,” he said.

The details of which of the county’s 2,000 or more positions will be eligible for remote work, and to what extent, will be up to each county department head, approved by Human Resources, noted Gallo, who began as HR director in February. Until then, it is unclear what percentage of the workforce will be remote, and for what period of time. Kagel estimated about 50 percent of county workers are on shift work, and necessarily on-site.

“It’s not so much voluntary by the employee,” she said. “The department head will have a lot of latitude to decide what positions, not people, can work at home — if it’s two days, if it’s a week if it’s particular days. If I have a (customer) window and I need somebody there all the time, you can’t all work from home Mondays and Fridays.

“So we are really looking at the job functions, not the personalities,” she said.”Some people may want to come in all the time and that’s fine, you know? People who want to come in can.”

“At the end of the day in putting together the policy, we wanted to make it so that departments have the ability to meet their needs in determining who, what positions, have the ability to work from home or remotely, versus not.

For example, he said, in the Human Resources department, the majority of functions can work remotely. “But for a collaboration perspective, because there is value in that collaboration, everybody comes in on Thursdays. In Emergency Services, it’s Tuesdays.”

“I think that’s the key,” said Walschburger. “The policy creates some kind of general framework. But each department is going to create their own individual plan, and not only are they going to specify what positions are eligible for how often they work off-site, but they are going to talk about these details — Everyone has to work between 8 and 4, or everybody has to be in the office on Tuesdays.

“Allowing flexibility for the different departments to craft a plan of ‘This is what we need for this program to work is one of the big keys, instead of everyone having to follow the same rules to a “t.”

There is also a social and cultural aspect to the remote work policy that is important, the trio agreed.

“If anything there are some cost savings,” said Kagel. “If you don’t have people on-site, they are not using electricity, for instance. Longer term, part of formalizing this through the policy is that it is the first step in re-evaluating our space needs. We may get rid of a building, or downsize. We may convert some space.”

Fewer people traveling from Oxford to West Chester, say, will reduce traffic and energy consumption.