Biden administration moves toward making the pandemic work-from-home experiment permanent for many federal workers
By Lisa Rein
May 24, 2021 at 3:00 a.m. PDT
As the Biden administration contemplates how to return the massive federal workforce to the office, government officials are moving to make a pandemic experiment permanent by allowing more employees than ever to work from home — a sweeping cultural change that would have been unthinkable a year ago.
The shift across the government, whose details are still being finalized, comes after the risk-averse federal bureaucracy had fallen behind private companies when it came to embracing telework — a posture driven by a perception that employees would slack off unless they were tethered to their office cubicles. That position hardened during the Trump administration, which dialed back work-from-home programs that had slowly expanded during the Obama era.
But the coronavirus crisis — and a new president eager to rebuild the trust of federal workers who had been attacked by former president Donald Trump as “the swamp” — has convinced the country’s largest employer that in many departments, employees can serve the public just as well from home, officials said.
Notice of the change is expected in June, when the administration is set to release long-awaited guidance to agencies about when and how many federal employees can return to the office — likely in hybrid workplaces that combine in-person and at-home options, according to officials and memos obtained by The Washington Post. The bulletin is expected to address remote work policies in the immediate and long term.
“We anticipate this guidance will leave room for decision-making at departments and agencies, to provide maximum flexibility for defining work requirements to meet mission and workforce needs,” said a senior administration official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because plans have not yet been finalized.
Some agencies have already made it clear they intend to give both current staff and new hires the option to continue to work away from the office.
Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack announced at his first town hall with employees in March that the department will allow telework as much as four days a week, expanded use of virtual and remote duty stations and more flexible schedules in its post-pandemic workplace. The department had been the first under Trump to slash what had been a robust telework program established during President Barack Obama’s second term.
“This will allow us to recruit and retain the absolute best talent, which will make USDA an employer of choice,” spokesman Matt Herrick said. Requests for continued telework are the “number one question employees ask,” he said.
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How much other federal employees will be able to work from home will be up to individual agencies and is likely to vary widely depending on employee needs, manager preferences and the department’s mission, officials said. Many jobs — such as screening air travelers, building sorties for bombers and serving veterans in hospitals — do not lend themselves to remote work.
Still, a broader endorsement of a work-from-home culture by the Biden administration would have far-reaching implications for the 2.1 million federal employees around the country, as well as the vast federal contracting workforce, which could follow suit.
Like private-sector employees, federal workers had to quickly adjust to makeshift home offices during the public health crisis. Agencies scrambled to get equipment to staff members who had never worked outside the office — including, for example, customer service agents at the Internal Revenue Service and Social Security Administration, and employees who process benefit claims at the Department of Veterans Affairs.
The share of the workforce teleworking every day rose from 3 percent before the pandemic to 59 percent at its peak last year, according to a recently released survey of federal workers.
The move proved highly popular. Employees gave the flexibility high marks in the workforce survey, and many managers concluded that productivity didn’t suffer.
“I’m old school, and I’m still prejudiced against it, but I’ve evolved,” said Ann Stefanek, who supervises a team of 14 public affairs officers at the Pentagon for the Air Force. “I have some really good people who have busted their butts in the pandemic. If they tell me they need to work from home one day a week, I should listen to that.”
Facing competition for new talent from private companies that are collapsing bricks-and-mortar operations in favor of virtual offices, the Biden administration is encouraging agencies to imagine their post-pandemic workplaces and who will occupy them.
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President Biden speaks at the White House on Thursday. (Demetrius Freeman/The Washington Post)
Managers are surveying their employees for their preferences. Among the possibilities: Opening job vacancies to applicants living anywhere in the country, who might work and even manage staffs thousands of miles away from their home offices in Washington.
“Collectively, the federal government has an opportunity for a ‘leap frog’ moment to shape the future of work,” Susan Gough, a spokeswoman for the Defense Department, the largest federal agency, said in an email.
Before the pandemic, about 11 percent of civilian and active-duty Pentagon employees did some of their jobs from home, a share that rose to 75 percent at one point last year, Gough said.
“The cultural barriers to telework have essentially collapsed [with the pandemic],” said Rep. Gerald E. Connolly (D), whose Northern Virginia district includes tens of thousands of federal employees and contractors. “The younger generation demands it.”
Still, a permanent shift away from the office or to a long-distance location poses some singular challenges for the federal government, experts on the federal workforce say.
The federal real estate footprint, reduced under the Obama and Trump administrations to save money, could continue to shrink. Agencies will also have to wrestle with how to track performance, whether to continue paying premiums for those living in expensive cities and how to be fair to those working in jobs that do not qualify for remote work.
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Higher-paid employees in policy, regulatory, research and other roles have traditionally enjoyed more telework privileges than lower-paid ones whose government jobs often require face-to-face interaction. And with the government offering a far more diverse set of occupations than most private companies, a push for a permanent shift could raise sensitive issues.
“It’s going to give some employees a sense that there are haves and have-nots,” said Jeff Neal, a former personnel chief at the Department of Homeland Security and founder of the blog ChiefHRO.com.
“Someone commuting to an aircraft plant will think, ‘You get to sit home in your bunny slippers working at your computer, while I’m stuck in traffic on my commute,’ ” Neal said.
Dave Cann, director of organizing for the American Federation of Government Employees, the largest union representing federal workers, said there is an openness to negotiating conditions such as equipment and supplies, the number of telework days allowed and notice of home visits from managers.