Federal workers have scored a significant victory in their standoff with President Joe Biden. More than a year after his chief of staff called for agencies to "aggressively execute" a return-to-office plan, the administration appears to have relented. The goal now is for eligible teams to "move toward" appearing in person -- at least half the time, on average.
Taxpayers deserve better. Biden should tell federal workers that if they aren't willing to come into the office, the government will find others who are. And Kamala Harris and Donald Trump should both make clear how they plan to address the issue should they be elected.
Telework has become a widespread office perk in the post-pandemic world. It's said to boost employee morale, and federal hiring managers see it as a valuable recruitment and retention tool. Yet there's little conclusive evidence that remote work increases productivity long-term. (Employee surveys, for obvious reasons, are an unreliable indicator.) It's also impeded career development for younger workers -- to say nothing of the devastating impact on local businesses and public transportation. Earlier this year, Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser ordered city workers to return to work four days a week.
A decade before the COVID-19 pandemic, Congress passed the Telework Enhancement Act to accommodate remote work in bad weather and other emergencies. Few agencies were prepared for the scale of its adoption: Six months into the outbreak, two-thirds of government employees were working from home. Yet as COVID vaccinations and treatments became widely available, such precautions were no longer necessary. In his 2022 State of the Union speech, Biden said that the "vast majority" of federal employees would once again work in person. A year later, he declared an end to the public-health emergency.
Federal agencies resisted Biden's demands. (One union said it was "completely taken aback" and filed two unfair labor practice complaints in response.) A government report last year found that 17 of 24 agency headquarters were operating at a capacity of 25 percent or less, compared with about 50 percent for office buildings in 10 major metropolitan areas.
Congress pressed the White House for progress. Last month, the Office of Management and Budget published a 3,000-page report that found telework-eligible federal employees spend 60 percent of their working hours in person, in line with the private sector. Though encouraging, the data is limited: Officials analyzed work trends over just two pay periods, and the results varied widely by agency. (Treasury Department employees, for example, spent 35.7 percent of their working hours in person.) OMB also conceded that it doesn't collect data on average office-space use but said it's developing metrics "in the near term."
It's doubtful this report will satisfy lawmakers, who are rightly concerned that the American people are footing the bill for a costly work-from-home experiment with inconsistent oversight. Taxpayers spend more than $80 million a year on underused office space. And absent standardized measures of productivity and customer -- that is, constituent -- satisfaction, it's unclear whether federal workers are doing their jobs as effectively as they should be. Just a third of Americans are happy with the results.
Research suggests that remote work can decrease collaboration, curtail innovation and stall "firm-wide" productivity -- in this case, potentially limiting the government's ability to respond to crises and build consensus on policy goals. Many federal jobs can't be done well remotely, while managers worry that telework tends to impede on-the-job training and mentorship.
A bill proposed by Sens. Mitt Romney and Joe Manchin offers a reasonable compromise. It would establish a telework ceiling of 40 percent of days in a pay period, providing reasonable flexibilities and waivers. Any bill should likewise improve data collection, including measures of how telework may be affecting customer satisfaction and require agencies to report productivity measures regularly to Congress.
Delivering results for the American people, according to OMB, remains the administration's "north star." Congress should hold the White House to its word. Federal workers are paid to serve the public. They need to show up.