Dane County officials want local employers to continue to encourage remote work after the pandemic ends.
According to Dane County Executive, Joe Parisi, encouraging remote work can lead to improvements in air quality, reduction in road traffic and improvement in overall productivity and efficiency at work.
“The Covid-19 pandemic brought a lot of hurt to families, communities, our country and economy but how we adapted in our workplaces offers the template for true, once in a generation change to substantively address what’s happening to our planet. Some of our busiest roads saw a 40-60% decline in traffic during the peak of the pandemic, and 2020 marked the steepest decline in carbon dioxide emissions globally that we have seen since World War II. We have a real chance here to make a difference for future generations, and in many cases with workplace telecommuting practices already in place—this is just to keep doing what we are doing.”Joe Parisi, Dane County Executive
Dane County has developed remote work policies. These policies will allow county managers and other employees to explore and encourage remote work or hybrid work models. The county is exploring the possibility working from home for between 650 and 950 employees for some days of the week.
What will be the result of the county’s decision to encourage remote work? For every 100 county employees who work from home for three days a week for one year, the carbon emissions will reduce by 135 metric tons. Remote work will also save a combined 337,000 miles in commute by vehicles.
As can be seen in these projections, encouraging remote work has a lot of positive environmental impact. Besides just better work-life balance for employees, the environment benefits as well which makes adopting a remote work model an environmentally responsible decision.
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