Navigating the New Normal: Remote Work in NAST Member Organizations

Presented at NAST's Annual Conference, September 24, 2024. 

The 2020 COVID-19 pandemic changed the way Americans worked. In October 2020 the Pew Research Center reported 71% of US employees whose jobs could be performed remotely were working from home five days per week. Since then that number has steadily fallen and was last reported by Pew as 35% of workers in March 2024. Most workplaces began bringing staff back into the workplace once COVID-19 vaccines had become available to the adult population.

By this time work-from-home (WFH) had become standard operating practice for knowledge-based workers, and instead of returning to the office five days a week, offices adjusted to hybrid schedules. For most offices hybrid was untrodden ground, and managers were flexible in their approaches to hybrid. Best practices for hybrid work are still largely unknown, and the highest-quality research on this topic is still in its infancy. Further, much of the early academic research focuses on private corporations, which have different operating expectations and constraints from public or government knowledge work.

These interviews were commissioned by the National Association of State Treasures (NAST) to illuminate some of the approaches their member offices took since March 2020 to transition to WFH and hybrid work. This report is an extension of the survey about hybrid work conducted by NAST in Fall 2023. Though some State Treasurer’s Offices (STOs) participated in both the earlier survey and these interviews, some States participated in interviews but not the survey and vice versa. Full methodology can be found in the appropriate appendix.

Interviews were conducted by the Center for Municipal Finance, a research center at the University of Chicago’s Harris School of Public Policy.
Briana Diaz served as Research Fellow, and Justin Marlowe as Faculty Advisor.

High-Level Findings
• States structured their workplaces by having employees work 2, 3, or 5 days from the office (33% breakdown for each structure).
• No State reported changes in quality of services to the public during or after changes to workplace structure.
• States differed by topic of the most concern for the future of remote/hybrid work.  No State reported younger incoming workforce as a concern.
• No States reported similar processes for return-to-office (RTO).  Earlier RTO dates were associated with more days in office post RTO.
• States highlighted similar benefits and costs to hybrid work. Technology was the most typically cited cost, while employee morale was the most frequent benefit.
• States differed in their perception of employee productivity during WFH days.
• States that considered their post March 2020 conversion to WFH as “smooth” tended to attribute their success to disaster plans.  Of these, one State attributed their success to a COVID-specific disaster plan.
• When considering “advice to other” STOs considering hybrid, State representatives pointed to a consistent set of themes.

Read the entire report here.