Business feature: Remote work likely here to stay

CLOVIS - One vaccination at a time, COVID-19 is going away. The remote work movement it helped inflate, however, is likely here to stay.

The Clovis Industrial Development Corporation, and a few local businesses, are hoping to take advantage of that.

The CIDC is marketing Clovis as a "TruGig Community," and partnering with Soloworks and Plateau to find and retain residents who can do remote jobs with small-town amenities and fiber-speed Internet.

Rachel Forrester, public relations and communications manager for the CIDC, said the goal is to recruit new residents, who aren't tied to an office anyway and may prefer a community the size of Clovis. The initiative also seeks to retain residents who can work remotely in a job they previously had to move across the country to take.

Forrester is herself a remote worker for the CIDC and the Clovis/Curry County Chamber of Commerce, as her job transitioned to remote when her family moved to Florida in June.

"Because of COVID," said Forrester, "a lot of people are going, 'Could this position be remote?'"

At Firehouse Workspace, just a short walk from the chamber, the answer is a yes that gets louder with every new client.

Co-owner Kala Adair likes to tell people that Firehouse takes the same approach to work as a gym does. You can pay for a $25 one-day pass, and there are a la carte rental options like conference rooms and photo studios, or you can buy monthly access between $99 and $349 depending on whether you just need a desk or a private office.

Adair said she expects her clientele to start ramping up in August, but her small group of renters already includes a military spouse who does human resources for a New York company while her family is stationed at Cannon Air Force Base and a longtime Clovis resident who didn't have to uproot his family to take a Wisconsin-based job.

Kala and her husband Cory began to look at the space on the 400 block of Pile Street in July 2019 and closed in February 2020. While they'd have preferred the pandemic never happened for all of its numerous negative impacts - Adair Transportation took significant hits when virtual school largely sidelined buses - the silver lining is growth in the service they're looking to provide at Firehouse.

"I think COVID sped up things," said Adair, who envisions military spouses being a target demographic for remote work. "We were going to see a shift to remote. Now we're seeing it happen at a faster rate."

The chamber would work with individuals on finding and landing remote jobs, becoming effective remote employees and whether they're better off as employees or independent contractors.

Work with local employers would include training on virtual meetings, a review of what jobs could be done remotely and how to monitor remote work performance.

Soloworks operates at a cost of $3,750 per job created, and the first three jobs are included in the $11,250 startup costs. The invoice comes after the jobs are created.

The argument is the community benefit outweighs the cost, because that Clovis-based remote worker will spend far more than $3,750 locally on housing, basic necessities and entertainment.

CIDC Executive Director Chase Gentry said the CIDC would likely cover the per-job fees, but it is open to local partnerships and funding from the New Mexico Economic Development Department.

Right now, the marketing is geared toward Eastern New Mexico University and Texas Tech.

"We're trying to either bring them back," Forrester said, "or hopefully they know somebody in that lifestyle."