How federal agencies are calling workers back to office full-time

The latest: Agencies must work up their implementation plans describing how they'll comply with the return-to-office directive and submit the plans by Feb. 7, per a new memo released Monday by OPM and the Office of Management and Budget (OMB).

Agencies must:

• Include timelines. (Employees who can return to work quickly — aka those near official work sites — should be prioritized, per the memo, and those more than 50 miles from an agency office should be phased in.)
• Outline how existing collective bargaining agreements will be brought into compliance with the order.
• Describe how permanent worksites for current remote employees will be determined.
• Detail what criteria will be used for granting return-to-work exceptions.

Zoom in: The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) last week ordered all employees to begin working in person, barring certain situations such as "physical inability" or "lack of adequate office space," per a DHS memo shared with Axios. Within 30 days, DHS leaders must report which workers have not returned and why.

• The State Department will cancel almost all its telework on March 1, and remote workers must be in office by July 1, reports Government Executive.

The big picture: Every federal agency head had to revise their telework policies by 5pm last Friday. The directives may differ, but they all must:

• Instruct employees to work full-time at their "duty stations" unless excused due to a "disability, qualifying medical condition or other compelling reason certified by the agency head and the employee's supervisor," per OPM.
• Require that every employee complies within 30 days.

"The only way to get employees back to the office is to adopt a centralized policy requiring return-to-work for all agencies across the federal government," OPM said.

• "Seeking to cajole individual agencies to try to get employees to return to the worksite has not succeeded."

The fine print: If a worker's duty station is over 50 miles from an agency office, then the agency should move the employee's duty station to the "most appropriate agency office," per the order.

• The Trump administration will also cooperate with existing union contracts, per the memo, and some exceptions may be granted thanks to "collective bargaining obligations."

Context: Federal teleworkers go into their offices or duty stations during part of the pay period, and work from home or another outside spot the rest of the time.

• Remote federal workers don't have those same expectations. They've typically received sign-off to have their home as their official workspace.

By the numbers: Localized data for federal remote workers is limited, plus it has a high margin of error and significant reporting lag time, but stats from the 2023 American Community Survey give some insight as to how many locals could be affected by these pushes, Hamilton Lombard, a demographer with UVA's Weldon Cooper Center, tells Axios Richmond.

• That data, which includes the military in its count, shows 25.2% of Maryland federal workers are WFH — the country's largest share.
• D.C. snags the second spot at 23.8%. Virginia is 10th, with 15.7%.

What they're saying: "To just take a blanket brush across and say, 'Get rid of telework,' is going to hurt millions and millions of Americans who depend on these people doing their jobs," said Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y).

• "There are many ways that telework is very, very effective, and when you say, 'Get rid of telework,' it just means you want to take a dagger to the heart of federal workers and the federal government."

The order at large is a win for Mayor Muriel Bowser, who's long advocated for federal workers to return in-person to give the city's empty federal buildings — and downtown's economy — a boost.

• Bowser is all-in on Trump's push for in-person work and said in a statement to the Washington Post that their collaboration "will continue to deliver for D.C. and the American public."
• The move also follows the footsteps of other local employers like the Washington Post and Amazon, who've ordered workers back five days a week.

Zoom out: The order will mean that the federal government will have a tougher time attracting and retaining talented employees, experts tell Axios' Emily Peck.

• The government has long been at a recruiting disadvantage to the private sector because the jobs pay less, and in the case of certain sectors, like technology, it's hard to lure people away from the West Coast to Washington, Peck writes. Remote work gave them an edge.

But that could be the point, as a return-to-office mandate is part of the Department of Government Efficiency's (DOGE) effort to cut the size of the bureaucracy.

• "Requiring federal employees to come to the office five days a week would result in a wave of voluntary terminations that we welcome," Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, who is stepping down from DOGE, wrote last year in a Wall Street Journal opinion piece.

The intrigue: There might not even be offices for some of these workers to return to, reports the Post.

• The federal government has been downsizing much of its office space as it sat empty post-COVID, and many workers told the Post their employer didn't have enough desks for a full head count.

This is a developing story. Check back for updates.