The nature of work is changing. Iowa should be an early adopter

I remember the feeling growing up in Decorah of a store closing on Water Street, our main drag. I remember the sadness of young families leaving town. That feeling remains all too present: rural Iowa still struggles to grow. Today, as we’ve improved our broadband infrastructure and communities across Iowa have found creative ways to make themselves more attractive to aspiring professionals and young families, there’s one missing link: jobs. One simple way to begin to reverse this is to allow government employees to take their jobs with them to the small towns they want to be in.

For seven years, I served as the state’s chief public corruption prosecutor in the Attorney General’s Office before becoming your State Auditor. In that job, as well as this one, I have worked everywhere. At the office. At home. I can even work from my truck on almost any road in Iowa, thanks to my cellphone booster. One of my favorite places to work is a tree stand. I can review audit reports there, just as I could listen to suspect and witness interviews as a prosecutor. I’m much more likely to get interrupted by a coworker in the office than by a deer I want to tag in the woods.

I carried the experience of my upbringing in Decorah, along with my work-everywhere work ethic, into my work as your State Auditor. Before the pandemic began, we reformed the office not only to empower remote work, but also to encourage our employees to live anywhere in Iowa. We call the policy “Statewide Work, Statewide Jobs.” There’s no good reason to force reliable workers to live in Des Moines when their hearts, and some tax dollars paying their salary, are elsewhere.

Sen. Joni Ernst just proposed forcing government employees to be in an office five days a week. Why not let them move to small towns and rural areas instead? They can’t do that if they have to be in the office. Back home in Iowa, Gov. Kim Reynolds could have implemented policies to allow talented public employees to work and live anywhere but chose instead to force everyone back to the office after the pandemic — even encouraging private employers to do the same. Imagine instead being able to cut taxpayers’ real estate and building maintenance costs by reducing office space needs — a win-win for everyone!

Finally, if there’s work to be done for taxpayers, we want talented people doing it. Fortune recently covered research showing that forcing workers into the office full-time tends to push out the most talented employees — and that they are harder to replace than entry level employees. Reliable workers — regardless of who employs them — will go find an employer that is talent-focused and location-practical if our government foolishly forces them to sit in the same chair five days a week.

Now, can at-home workers lack productivity? Yes. And unproductive workers should be disciplined and eventually fired if they don’t do their work. But that’s true in the office as well. We should care about whether the work gets done, not the location where someone does it. And if we can get more careers out to rural Iowa to help rebuild small towns while saving tax dollars spent on public buildings, good. Let’s serve the whole state by embracing the future.

Rob Sand is the Iowa State Auditor.