MedPage today story.
Employees at HHS and its various divisions are struggling to figure out how to comply with President Donald Trump's executive order requiring them to report to their jobs in person on an ongoing basis, and how the changes will affect them.
Early executive order
The requirement for personal work was set out in decree signed by President Trump on January 20, his first day in office. The two-paragraph order stated that “the heads of all departments and agencies of the Executive Branch shall, as soon as practicable, take all necessary measures to end telework and require employees to return to work in person at their respective duty stations on a permanent basis, subject to the heads of departments and agencies making such exceptions as they deem necessary.”
This order was further explained in Memo dated January 27 agency leaders from both the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) and the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). The memo directed agency leaders to submit plans no later than Feb. 7 that “describe the steps the agency will take to renegotiate telework agreements for all eligible employees, including milestones for implementation” and “indicate a timeline for all eligible employees to return to in-person work as soon as possible.” Agencies should also explain their plans for returning those who work remotely full-time to the office, especially those who live more than 50 miles from their duty station, and outline any exceptions they intend to provide.
Trump is not alone in his antipathy toward remote work for federal employees. Last December, Senator Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) published a report stating that only 6% of federal employees worked full-time in an office; the report was entitled “Outside the Office: Bureaucrats on the Beach and in Bubble Baths, but Not in Office Buildings.” Ernst's percentage was in strong conflict with a 2024 OMB report that has since been removed from the OMB website, which found that 54% of federal employees work in an office full time, while the remaining 46% of federal employees are eligible to work remotely, according to the data. story about Meritalk website. Only 10% of federal employees – 228,000 people – are working completely remotely.
Usually popular with both parties
Overall, though, telework is actually popular on both sides of the aisle, as Max Stier, president and CEO of the Public Service Partnership, said last month in a call with reporters: “There is bipartisan support for telework in the federal space because, when implemented correctly, it has been proven to provide both better productivity and an improved ability to recruit the best talent for federal jobs.” This is reported by the Public Service Partnership. its goal is to build “better government and stronger democracy.”
In the last few years, “there's obviously been an attempt to bring people out of the federal space back into the office,” Steere continued. “The Biden administration has actually been proactive in making sure this happens. … Some organizations, such as the Patent and Trademark Office, have achieved almost exclusively high results. … We know it's important to understand that you have these options. [telework] components that were working very well, even before the pandemic, and you don't want to disrupt them because it would have very negative consequences for the American people.”
The office order comes through as the General Services Administration. announced plans to significantly reduce The federal government's influence on real estate. “One of the things our government has become is more cost-effective in terms of physical presence as a result of increased use of telework and remote work,” Steere said. “So these things do conflict with each other, and of course it is very important to understand the needs of any organization in transition.”
Like all other federal workers, more than 80,000 HHS employees, some of whom spoke with MedPage today on condition of anonymity – are trying to figure out how the order to resume work will be implemented in their specific situation. The agency has staff assigned to HHS headquarters in Washington as well as 10 regional offices scattered across the U.S., and logistical issues remain. For example, some who previously worked at the Washington headquarters say there likely won't be enough interior space or parking to accommodate all the employees if everyone currently assigned there returns full-time.
One employee working elsewhere said he had heard that executives would have to return to work full-time sooner than non-executive employees and that there may still be some “ad hoc” remote work arrangements. According to the employee, there may not be enough space for everyone in the building.
Another employee said their colleagues were “not too happy” to hear about the requirement to work full time in the office, noting that the rule seemed to replace other conditions under which people could, for example, work four 10-hour days and get a fifth day off. “This is an overbearing, dictatorial, hard-eared approach to management,” the person said. “It’s not about efficiency, it’s about vindictiveness. There are ways to achieve the common goal of serving the American people well, but this is not it.”
Changes in work-life balance
With this change, “people's work-life balance is about to be completely disrupted,” the person continued. They noted that “the flexibility of remote work allowed them to create a life in which they were much more productive as parents while still getting their work done; if they had to drive at 3:00 p.m., they could do so and work until the evening. I was getting emails from people who were still working at 7 or 8 pm. But you can’t do that if you’re in an office 5 days a week with strict workplace rules.”
Another employee said working remotely has made it easier to work longer hours when needed. Before remote work, “it took me an hour to get to work in the morning and maybe 90 minutes or more to get home in the afternoon,” they said, explaining they worked a 7 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. shift. But when it comes to remote work: “I could work until 7 or after 3:30, and this happened often—situations arise that require more than just the 8 hours you do Monday through Friday.”
One thing that could affect whether and when HHS employees return to the office full-time is any collective bargaining agreements that employee unions negotiate with the federal government. “In the OPM memo, they indicated that there were some issues that needed to be resolved through the collective bargaining process before union-represented employees could actually return to the office,” the employee added. Several unions, including the American Federation of Government Employees and the National Treasury Employees Union, represent different groups of HHS employees.
Christina Fiore contributed reporting to this story.
