The Washington Collection Agency Board, under the state’s Department of Licensing, has extended an emergency rule allowing collection agency workers to continue working from home while also starting work on a permanent rule to allow working remotely to continue unimpeded.
The board held a virtual meeting last week. It agreed to extend the emergency rule, which first went into effect in June, through Feb. 17, 2021 in order to “ensure adequate time to develop and codify this temporary rule into a permanent” one, according to minutes from the meeting.
Many states have allowed collection agencies to deploy remote workforces to keep people safe and socially distant from one another in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Interestingly enough, agencies from across the country have reported higher levels of employee productivity with staff working from home and there are hopes across the country that agencies will be able to continue to do so even after the pandemic is over.
The Board’s Rule Committee has met three times in the past three weeks to discuss the changes needed to permanently allow collection agency employees to work from home. It’s current definition of remote work is “the practice of conducting activity meeting the criteria of a collection agency or out-of-state collection agency as defined in RCW 19.16.100, from home or other alternative location through the use of technology which allows the employee to access normal work material (email, telephone, electronic documents, etc.). Remote work may be scheduled or on an ad hoc basis.”
