Federal Government In-Office Rate In-Line with Private Sector: OMB

Republicans in Congress have been hammering away at telework and questioning whether it impacts an agency’s ability to fulfill its mission.

Now we have some concrete data that shows how prevalent telework is within the federal workforce, thanks to a congressionally mandated report from the Office of Management and Budget (OMB).

The report found that 54 percent of the federal workforce cannot telework at all because their jobs require in-person presence, while 46 percent of the workforce is telework eligible. Another subset, ten percent, is considered fully remote and never reports to a specific federal jobsite.

Among employees who are telework eligible, some 61 percent of working hours has been in person, either at an office or at an off-site work location. The data comes from 24 CFO Act agencies during two biweekly pay periods in May 2024. That far exceeds the goal of 50 percent in office for telework-eligible feds that the Biden Administration set in April 2023.

“These figures demonstrate that the federal workforce is generally in line with the rates of on-site work performed across all sectors in the economy, as demonstrated by independent analysis from the Congressional Budget Office,” OMB wrote in the report.

The report was ordered by Congress under the appropriations legislation for 2024.

Agency Differences

OMB broke down the data by agency.

The Departments of Agriculture and State led the way with some 80 percent of work hours in person from telework eligible employees. The Departments of Treasury, Education, and Housing and Urban Development (HUD), had less than 40 percent of work hours from telework-eligible employees spent in person.

“While no-one-size-fits-all policy can apply universally across the government, federal agencies are moving towards a posture where telework-eligible teams are working in-person at the office at least half of the time, on average,” OMB wrote.

Unused Real Estate

The report also waded into the issue of unused federal office, saying that the slow pace of reducing the federal real estate footprint is justified, given the focus on hybrid work.  It also took aim at lawmakers for redirecting $13 billion over the last decade out of the General Services Administration (GSA) Federal Buildings Fund.

“Many agencies recognized that they had more office space than needed prior to the pandemic and face continued challenges in right-sizing their real property portfolio, including specifically lack of funding from Congress to reconfigure and consolidate office space to support mission needs,” said the report.

Workforce Concerns

While the report may ease the concerns of some members of Congress, it is not easing concerns of federal employee groups and workforce experts, who tout the value of telework for recruitment and retention.

Federal workplace expert Mika Cross of Strategy@Work told FEDManager that the report also shows that the federal government needs to be a better job at understanding the true impact of requiring in-office attendance on an agency’s mission.

“The recent OMB report on telework and in-person work underscores the need to move beyond merely counting hours of attendance. Instead, we should focus on outcomes, impact, results, and service to citizens. I worry about the areas that affect productivity that we are not tracking in this report as a result of a forced mandate focusing on in-office work,” said Cross.  

“However, by continuing to focus on defining and measuring results rather than activity or physical presence, we can better perform our mission AND increase the ability attract, retain, and engage employees,” Cross concluded.