Telework is here to stay in government and California’s employees want it that way.

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

The state of California Department of General Services (DGS) just released their findings on their telework study. Of DGS’ 1,979 telework eligible employees, 73% are now teleworking (21 percent part-time, 61 percent full-time) and in a more recent survey nearly 80% of all respondents indicated they want to continue teleworking permanently. Since March of 2020, DGS teleworkers have:

• saved approximately 16.4 years of commute time
• saved almost 200,000 gallons of gasoline ($620,000 in gas dollars saved)
• avoided more than 1,761 metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions

With metrics like these and the employee sentiment being that remote work is preferred over the office, it is very likely that the government workplace will be forever defined as a result of COVID-19.