Missouri’s recent bill would establish a “Missouri State Employee Work-from-Anywhere Task Force.” The bill focuses on determining the best policies and practices to allow state employees to work remotely and assess all remote work arrangements throughout the state.
Since last year, Missouri’s state agencies have negotiated remote working policies. This new proposal puts different stakeholders, including members from the Legislature, government departments, and the tech industry, to have the possibility of working remotely.
Missouri’s Remote Work Bill
The bill, sponsored by Rep. Louis Riggs, focuses on giving employees what they need to work remotely successfully:
“At one point, we had 25% of the state working remotely. That was great. We had 90% job satisfaction basically across the board. The problem is a lot of folks who wanted to take the remote work option weren’t able to because they didn’t have good enough internet.”Louis Riggs
In addition to the other six bills Riggs field before, the new proposal is to expand broadband. Expanding internet access, affordability, and speed will significantly improve employees’ work performance and quality of life.
For Riggs, beyond remote work, having high-speed internet services impacts different industries like online education, healthcare, and other relevant resources.
Additionally, the population of Missouri has reduced, and according to Riggs, this is directly bounded by having bad internet speed and access.
