This story is part of The Salt Lake Tribune’s ongoing commitment to identify solutions to Utah’s biggest challenges through the work of the Innovation Lab.

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People were clocking in from home in Utah even before it started to become widely acceptable and the state still is popular for remote workers.

Utah has had among the highest proportion of residents working from home for years, according to a fact sheet from the Kem C. Gardner Policy Institute.

A recent study also ranked Utah as the second-best state for working from home based on work and living environment factors like internet access and home size.

The Beehive State is “ahead of the curve” on remote work, said Paul Hill, program director for Utah State University’s Rural Online Initiative.

The state’s high rankings related to remote work come down to “how intentional our state and industry leaders have been in leveraging this modern workplace practice for a competitive advantage and as an economic development strategy,” Hill said.

Economists predict that remote work will continue trending up after a slight dip following the pandemic, Hill said.

From third to 12th to ninth

In 2019, well before the pandemic, Utah ranked third in the nation for the proportion of residents working from home at 7.4%.

“Back then, the West stood out for its high work-from-home rates, with Colorado, Arizona, Idaho, and Oregon joining Utah as the five states with the highest percentage of home-based workers,” Heidi Prior writes in a blog about the fact sheet.

That’s because of innovative leadership in the private and public sectors, Hill said.

State government allowed remote work before the pandemic, he said, and was even encouraging it.

When the pandemic led to rapid adoption of remote work, Utah fell to 12th.

But the state was back in the top 10 in 2022. With 18% of residents primarily working from home, Utah was ninth in the nation.

Four other western states (Colorado, Washington, Arizona and Oregon), the Washington, D.C. area — including the district, Maryland and Virginia — and Massachusetts and New Hampshire rounded out the top 10.

A recent study from WalletHub found Utah’s work and living environment were favorable for remote work, placing it only before Delaware in a comparison of the 50 states and Washington, D.C.

The study considered factors such as cybersecurity, internet access, number of remote workers, utility costs, internet service quality and housing costs.

One article on the study notes Utah is “lauded for its favorable work environment and impressive quality of life.”

Several livability rankings note the state’s abundance of year-round outdoor activities, from skiing and snowboarding the greatest snow on earth to hiking in the Mighty Five.

Remote work is becoming more common in rural Utah

Working from home has been more prevalent in some areas of Utah than others.

Before the pandemic, it was most common in Grand, Summit and Rich counties. All three had more than 10% of residents primarily working from home in 2017, 2018, 2019 or all three years, according to American Community Survey estimates.

Working from home also was becoming more prevalent in Washington County before the pandemic, with more than 10% of residents avoiding a commute entirely in 2018 and 2019.

In 2021 and 2022, remote work was most common in the Wasatch Front — the highest rates were in Davis, Salt Lake and Utah counties both years.

Estimates for 2022 commuting rates in Utah’s less-populated counties won’t be available until December, but remote work was up from 2019 to 2021 in nearly every county based on 5-year estimates.

In general, remote work is less common in rural counties like Emery, San Juan, and Uintah.

But the Rural Online Initiative is focusing on helping rural communities and economies diversify, draw more people who can work from home and help rural families stay in those communities, Hill said.

There’s been negative net migration in rural counties for years, he said, especially of young people because of their perceptions about where they live.

“People leave rural communities because they don’t see the opportunity. And they’re right, mostly,” Hill said. “But in Utah, we’re changing that.”

The Rural Online Initiative has been working to connect the dots between the tight labor market in the Wasatch Front to higher unemployment levels in rural areas, Hill said.

That started by working to increase the demand for remote jobs in 2018, Hill said. Those efforts included helping one partner think about or negotiate remote opportunities when the other had an anchor job with the Bureau of Land Management or some other agency requiring them to live somewhere rural, he said.

“It wasn’t a thing that most people knew about, and they didn’t know how to go about it,” he said.

Then the program developed a leadership course to increase the supply of remote jobs, he said.

The number of people working from home in those rural communities has been coming up, according to American Community Survey data.

Lower cost of living and the desire to have children and raise them in their hometown are drawing people back, Hill said. Remote work allows that flexibility, he added, even if it requires commuting to the Wasatch Front once or twice a week.

Challenges and advantages to working from home

Though working from home has become commonplace, it’s still challenging for businesses to design and implement a remote work plan, Hill said.

“It’s really hard to be a remote worker,” he said. “It’s even harder to be a leader of remote work.”

Employees often end up overworking, eating all day and burning out, he said, and their supervisors are dealing with conflict, mentoring and onboarding while the person isn’t right there in the office.

The Rural Online Initiative teaches those skills as professional development for both employees and employers.

Utah has some advantages in implementing remote work plans, Hill said, including the state having spent wisely on broadband infrastructure.

“We are in such a better position than a Mississippi or a Missouri and some of these other Midwestern states,” he said.

State government also provides a good model itself, with employees located across the state, Hill said.

Utah launched its remote work initiative before the pandemic and made an effort to help employees and managers work from home easier and with greater success, according to an email from the state’s Division of Human Resource Management.

Those actions included having clear goals, training managers and employees on best practices, creating remote work policies with clear expectations, and providing access, support and training on the technology used for remote work.

More than 2/3 of state employees work remotely at least one day a week, according to the division, and they rank it as the third most important benefit.

Employers should be open to remote work, Hill said, and those who don’t implement it in some form will have issues with workplace culture and attracting talent.

Working remotely doesn’t mean colleagues never get together, he added, and “face-to-face is still the best option.”

Still, he said, it’s time to embrace the present and future and explore remote work opportunities.

Editor’s note • This story is available to Salt Lake Tribune subscribers only. Thank you for supporting local journalism.

Megan Banta is The Salt Lake Tribune’s data enterprise reporter, a philanthropically supported position. The Tribune retains control over all editorial decisions.