SAN JOSE, Calif. (KRON) — As coronavirus cases continue to spike, the future of work in the Bay Area has reached a new age and began shifting in a new direction with many employers working remotely.

Throughout the Bay Area employers are shifting work operations due to COVID-19 by going virtual and remote.

In the South Bay, the San Jose Water Company, an essential employer, has moved 25% of its 400 employees to working remotely and implemented new protocols to ensure both employee and public safety.

“As an essential service, drinking water, we had to make very quick adaptations to the change, we have about half of our employees that need to be out there everyday maintaining and operating crtical infrastructure — water treatment plants, pipelines, fire hydrants and alike,” said Eric Thornburg, President and Chief Executive Officer of the San Jose Water Company.

“We had to make a lot of adaptations to their work processes to protect them.”

As certain counties and cities across the nation reopen amid COVID-19, many employers have already begun to implement new protocols including the option for employees to work remotely.

For the San Jose Water Company and others throughout the Bay Area, having the option to work remotely has greatly improved quality of life all around for its employees.

Thornburg says employees have expressed the benefits from working remotely and want to continue to do so despite coronavirus restrictions easing.

“They told us they’re anxious to get back but they don’t want to go back like the way it was, they would like to use this work from home strategy to improve their lives and again at the same time we’ll be enhancing our service to our customer,” said Thornburg.

“If we can get 200 of our employees reduce their commuting days by five, that’s 25 percent of the month, little over one day a week, based on the average commute we can save about 30,000 commute miles a month just with those 200 employees.”

Adapting to working remotely

Over the last several months employees throughout the Bay Area have had to bear the blunt force of adapting to the ongoing changes caused by COVID-19.

For local software engineer manager at Palo Alto-based social news app Flipboard, Anna Jensen tells KRON4 when the pandemic first hit there was a unique transition period where employees had to educate themselves on how exactly working remotely will look for them.

“We all had to get used to it, it was a weird transition, everyone had to deal with reading these horror stories out of New York and we were just started to know what the coronavirus was going to do to our society,” said Jensen.

“Also just getting used to no being able to look next to you and ask your engineer who is sitting next to you … we had to get used to using screen sharing tools and zoom and slack.”

Jensen uses public transportation as her means to get to and from work with an average of a two hour commute each day — she says having the option to work remotely has brought extra time to balance work and personal time.

“Cutting that commute has given me like two hours or more back in my day to work on things that are not riding a train or spend time with my family,” said Jensen.

“That’s been a huge boost just in terms of productivity but also just in terms of general happiness and stress level.”

New normal

Despite the number of coronavirus cases rising and counties like Santa Clara rolling back reopening plans this week, a bright spot for employers and its employees has been a new opportunity to work remotely.

On Monday, Santa Clara County leaders and Bay Area employers came together to sign the “Cut the Commute” pledge, urging employers to give its employees remote work options as they consider their re-entry plans.

“This is a major step we can think about and reflect on as we’re in this special time where we really are looking for an opportunity to define a new world and a new normal that gives us an opportunity to enjoy cleaner air, less frustration in commute and less anxiety and stress over that commute,” said Rod Sinks, Chair of the Bay Area Air Quality Management District Board.

The digital transformation of work has brought many unknowns for employers and employees, but in the midst of the ongoing pandemic there has been one bright spot to build off on that includes everyone — cleaner air in the Bay Area due to carbon emissions substantially decreasing.

“The idea that over the last 15 years our commutes times has increased 25 percent,” said Sinks.

“We got to figure out how to rebalance for our quality of life and also for our productivity, this is an effective productivity step for those people and those jobs that can work from home.”

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