Gov. Tim Walz has announced a new policy regarding the percentage of in-person work for state employees.

On Tuesday, Gov. Walz announced an update to the telework policy, which will now require most state agency employees to work in-person for at least 50% of scheduled work days starting on June 1.

Around 60% of state employees already work in-person and did so during the COVID-19 pandemic, according to the governor’s office. The change is expected to affect about 15,000 individuals. There are about 40,000 state employees, according to the governor.

“This approach balances the flexibility of telework with the workplace advantages of being in office,” said Gov. Walz. “Having more state employees in the office means that collaboration can happen more quickly and state agencies can build strong organizational cultures more easily.”

The policy change provides an exemption for employees who live more than 75 miles away from their primary work location.

The governor’s office says that it will help support office districts like downtown St. Paul.

“It wasn’t a total surprise,” said Clare Sanford, the government relations chair for the Minnesota Child Care Association. “More employers are calling workers back to the office.”

She said the state’s approach of only requiring employees to return to the office 50% of their work days is helpful as centers and families adjust. Other private employers have also taken a gradual approach.

“If it happened overnight, we wouldn’t be able to serve all the families who were demanding childcare; we just wouldn’t have the staff in place,” said Sanford, who said centers are better prepared to handle the influx than a few years ago. “It’s a nice confluence that more and more families are looking for childcare outside of the home as they get called back to the office, and we’re better able to serve them; we have better qualified and retained staff.”

She explained that state funding has helped support early childhood educators. Sanford has been advocating at the Capitol for the state to continue funding the Great Start Compensation Support Payment Program at its current level, which provides money for educator pay and benefits. Continued funding for Early Learning Scholarships, which help families pay for high-quality child care, will also be critical.

“We’ve known for a long time that the cost of childcare is simply out of reach for many families,” she said. “So we might have increased demand and the ability to meet it, but not all of those families have the resources to access the supports they want, and that could result in them leaving or staying out of the workforce or being underemployed.”

Sanford encourages families affected by the change to start looking for care as soon as possible. While there are slots available at child care centers, she said there are also wait lists for some care.

“Child care providers are not seeing the levels of enrollment they had pre-pandemic but we are getting closer and we are seeing that grow, especially over the last year,” she said.