The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) is directing agencies to revise their telework policies and start arrangements for Federal employees to work onsite full-time by the end of the day tomorrow.
OPM issued a memo on Wednesday evening that says agencies should plan to meet a 30-day deadline to be in full compliance with President Donald Trump’s return-to-office executive order, which he signed on Monday.
The executive order (EO) directs department heads to “as soon as practicable, take all necessary steps to terminate remote work arrangements and require employees to return to work in-person at their respective duty stations on a full-time basis.” The document also allows for department heads to “make exemptions they deem necessary.”
Following the initial release of the EO on Monday, Federal workers expressed confusion given that the memo referred to “remote workers” as telework and remote work are two separate work-type designations. According to OPM, teleworkers are expected to “report to work both at an agency worksite and alternative worksite on a regular and recurring basis each pay period.”
Remote work, however, doesn’t “involve an expectation that the employee regularly reports to the agency worksite each pay period.” Remote work is arranged under individual agencies’ discretion if the arrangement is “consistent with the agency’s needs and duties of the given position.”
For employees who don’t have a physical location to report to, OPM said that Federal workers who are located more than 50 miles away from an agency office should report to the “most appropriate agency office based on the employee’s duties and job function.”
According to a report issued to Congress by the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) last April, following the COVID-19 pandemic “Federal employees returned to in-person work at rates comparable to the private sector by 2022,” with 54 percent of the Federal government’s 2.28 million employees working fully on-site.
Forty-six percent of the Federal workforce is telework eligible with only 10 percent of Federal employees in fully remote positions.
