Telework Exchange

Turnover within the ranks of its benefit eligibility specialists has always been one of the biggest headaches for the Utah Department of Workforce Services, which oversees, among other things, the state's programs for unemployment insurance, Medicaid, and food stamps. That was the case before the agency began ramping up an existing, but rarely used, telecommuting program to retain many of its Salt Lake City-based workers and recruit more specialists based in rural areas.

"Our eligibility jobs are often entry-level and what we found with many of our employees was that once they acquired the job skills and the experience, many would go off to better-paying positions," explains Curt Stewart, spokesperson for the Utah Department of Workforce Services. "For rural workers, however, having a state job with benefits is desirable and for some of our urban workers, especially those with a difficult commute, we now can offer a telecommuting option that they really seem to like."

Previously, the agency offered telecommuting only on an occasional or temporary basis to employees with special needs or circumstances. About 18 months ago, officials decided to implement a more structured program within its Eligibility Division to increase its rural employee base, better distribute its statewide caseload, and decrease staff turnover.

Today, 325 of approximately one thousand eligibility workers – nearly one-third of the departmental workforce – telecommutes on a full-time basis. Workers only need to leave their home-based office if their supervisor requires a meeting or for training, when they travel to a regional office.

"Because telecommuting has proven to be so beneficial to an eligibility specialist's quality of life and job satisfaction, we have been able to keep some really topnotch, long-term employees," Stewart says.

Getting the program underway was not without its challenges. The most important agency requirement was to develop and enforce secure standards and policies and to create a secure architecture that would ensure the protection of confidential data and personally identifiable information (PII), such as client addresses and Social Security numbers.

To support these requirements, the departmental Information Technology (IT) staff developed a thin-client implementation that features a diskless workstation. Telecommuters rely on a bootable, programmed CD to connect automatically through a virtual private network (VPN) to allow access to relevant applications and data located on multiple servers within the agency's data center.

The Department of Workforce Services provides each telecommuter with a laptop (minus a hard drive), Internet service, and a mobile phone. This core technology system, Stewart explains, "ensures that agency and client data cannot be stored, copied, or printed in the home environment," he says.

Other challenges faced included developing procedures to resolve issues with rural telephone companies and Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and deploying additional helpdesk support – both online and telephone-based – to assist telecommuters with computer and connection issues. "We have been able to resolve those concerns," Stewart says.

Like all 2,000 Workforce Services employees, telecommuters are on duty four days a week (the office is closed on Fridays) and they also work a normal daily schedule. Incoming calls are placed in queue and routed to eligibility workers on an as-available basis, no matter where they are located within the state. Stewart notes that this approach, in combination with online monitoring tools, has made it easy for managers and supervisors to accept and buy into the work arrangement.

"They can get a printout on each individual workstation and immediately find out what the volume level is for each of their employees, what the error rate is, and if there are any problems," Stewart explains.

Moving forward, officials hope to expand telecommuting within the Department of Workforce Services. "We've been able to really fine-tune the way we telecommute and we may be able to move it into additional programs in the future, depending on the demand and the need," Stewart says. "It is definitely a benefit that we want to offer our employees, and hopefully we will be able to expand even more job opportunities to workers in the rural parts of our state, which is important."