City Staff Ideas Challenge

Municipal employees already showed during the height of the pandemic that we can work successfully from home. Mayor Adam's supported this concept when he was seeking our Union votes 🗳 during the Democratic primary.

When we work at home 🏡 we support our local economies. We have to pivot as we are losing talent from all city agencies to the private sector. We can reduce our office footprint and repurpose those buildings to deal with the homeless crisis we have in NYC. We can consolidate field offices and make those offices we use in a neighborhood style office space where you come in only when we have to gather for certain office tasks. We need the outer borough Mayor to remember his promises to Union members and our families that he would support an alternative work schedule 📅. Promises Made in this area have NOT been kept!! We need a Mayor who is going to make the public sector competitive and flexible for those who choose to serve NYC.

I would much rather get a telework hybrid option than get a raise. Work/life balance is more valuable than money.

Working from home is fine as long as you are properly equipped and you actually do some work I know from experience 3 out of 6 of us civilians actually did some work the others got paid to do absolutely nothing. this is unfair and a waste of city money. I was given an apple I pad and it was horrible trying to do payroll on it for 200 uniform officers doing overtime everyday. I would rather work from the office but that's my situation. there is no structure in tele working for most city jobs. further more if you are not needed in the office then you're not needed at all, we will be giving up our jobs very soon. I would rather a raise than to work from home . Btw I do love my home but not all day.

I think the city needs to consider the fact that teleworking WORKS. With proper equipment and training, a lot of city operations can be done at home and operating cost for facilities can be cut. The city can cut costs in their facilities and fleet operations, along side, workers can work optimally in their own comforts, rather than commuting 1+ hour to and from work. It is imperative there are going to workers that are rather conservative (prefer to work in the office) or cannot adapt to new technological methods, but with new cut costs, investment into training and research into hybrid work schedules can be done. I strongly feel the city wants to be the cover for "return to office" initiative, but I'd like to ask city officials to logically breakdown that teleworking is a viable option, even if it's hybrid.

Bring back telework. Before COVID, so many things we've thought as not possible is actually possible. Let people work from home. Let people have a 4-day workweek. Does NYC even know the trauma that its employees go through? EAP doesn't work. I'm not saying scrap it, but most employees' complaints are centered around housing, work, commute, childcare, etc. and it seems these things aren't looked at or purposely avoided just to keep people grounded or below okay.

Teleworking for public employees has been proven effective multiple times over at all levels of government, including here in NYC during the worst of the COVID-19 pandemic. During that time, city employees were constantly praised for keeping the city running from home. When the drive to return to normalcy picked up, suddenly our performance was called into question. Most recently, our current Mayor worked from home while isolating with COVID, and touted his own performance from home - so we know that this is possible and can be effective.

Personally, I enjoy working in person with my colleagues and working in the field with city partners. However, we all have times in our life when working from home would provide balance, convenience, and safety. It is possible to have a common sense telework policy where we can achieve all of these things and still be productive. It's time to make this a reality for city employees, as it already is for many in the private sector.

I strongly agree that we need flexible telework options for city employees whose roles allow for it. COVID aside, giving back the commute time is a huge quality of life upgrade that would cost the city nothing. It would also allow greater flexibility for those with chronic illness, family/pet care needs, and just general life - how many times have people needed to take a day just to let a landlord in to fix something, when they could have just as easily been working at home during that time?

Aside from those benefits, we should also realize that many city offices are small, crowded, outdated, and do not actually have space to host regular meetings. Many office workers still take their meetings on Zoom because of this issue, which makes it even more confusing that we are asked to be at our desks each and every day to 'collaborate' when that mostly happens online.

I want to echo everyone else’s previous sentiments. The city is working within the prism of an outdated system. Implementing an innovative and flexible work from home schedule would greatly improve the work life balance of city employees. If the city remains antiquated, they will continue to lose tremendous talent over to the private sector making it harder to continually attract the next generation of workers. Since March 2020, city employees have shown that they could be both efficient and productive without entering an office 5 times a week. A flexible work from home option will: 1) decrease COVID spreading within the office making the offices much more spacious and safer, 2) eliminate stressful, long commutes to and from work, and 3) increase personal enjoyment and fulfilment in employees current job roles. On January 12th, 2022, The NY State Assembly in Albany introduced bill (A.457) which is called the NYC Telework Expansion bill. This is a step in the right direction.

The current administration repeatedly states that they want to prioritize results and efficiency. So why aren't we reevaluating city employee working arrangements to accommodate a hybrid model? A recent NY Times article shows that only 8% work full-time on-site. NYC has employed the most extraordinary public-sector workforce globally, and we should innovate contemporary solutions instead of propping up the current working model since its status quo.

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