Return-to-office mandates will be worse for federal employment than leaders realize

For many months, public sector unions warned about the damaging consequences to federal employee retention and recruitment posed by the federal government’s planned mandate to force staff to return to the office.

As a hint of things to come, we now have initial assessments of what has happened at a number of companies that were early movers in demanding that employees return to working in-person. It’s not a pretty picture.

A trio of compelling reports — the Greenhouse Candidate Experience Report, the Federal Reserve’s Survey of Household Economics and Decisionmaking (SHED) and Unispace’s “Returning for Good” report — offer grim hints of what will happen when government employees are forced to return to office.

Unispace finds that nearly half (42 percent) of companies that mandated office returns witnessed a higher level of employee attrition than they had anticipated. In other words, they knew it would cause some attrition, but they weren’t ready for the serious problems that would result.

Perhaps they should have. According to the Greenhouse report, a staggering 76 percent of employees stand ready to jump ship if their companies decide to pull the plug on flexible work arrangements. Employees from historically underrepresented groups are 22 percent more likely to consider other options if flexibility goes out the window.

The SHED survey helps explain why. The displeasure of shifting from a flexible work model to a traditional one has the same effect on employee satisfaction as a pay cut of up to 3 percent.

When it comes to recruitment, Greenhouse finds that 42 percent of candidates would outright reject roles that lack flexibility. Curious about what’s luring employees away? The Greenhouse report finds the following: increased compensation (48 percent); greater job security (34 percent); career advancement opportunities (32 percent); better flexible work policies (28 percent); a more positive company culture (27 percent). In other words, excluding career-centric factors such as pay, security, and promotion, flexible work policies are paramount among employee desires.

Interestingly, Unispace throws another factor into the mix: choice. According to their report, the top feelings employees feel overall toward their work are happiness (31 percent), motivation (30 percent) and excitement (27 percent). However, all three of these feelings decrease for those with mandated office returns (by 27 percent, 26 percent, and 22 percent, respectively). The finding highlights that staff are more open to returning to the office if it is a choice rather than a mandate.

How does this information square with data on government agencies? Just like private companies whose employees threatened to walk before the forced return-to-office mandates, we have similar data from pre-mandate statistics in government agencies.

A recent Environmental Protection Agency internal survey paints a compelling picture of employee sentiment toward remote work arrangements. The EPA’s survey reveals a strong preference for telework among its employees, with a staggering 65.9 percent indicating that they would consider leaving the agency if telework and remote work opportunities were diminished.

This is a resounding statement about how much value employees place on the flexibility and autonomy that telework provides. Furthermore, 80 percent of respondents anticipated experiencing “personal hardships” if telework were reduced.

Similarly, at the National Science Foundation (NSF), a survey revealed a palpable concern among employees regarding increased in-office mandates. Conducted by the American Federation of Government Employees, the union representing NSF staff, the survey revealed that 42 percent of respondents feel that being required to work in the office four days per pay period would significantly affect them, complicating their adjustment to the new mandate. Furthermore, 27 percent of NSF employees view such in-office expectations as “unworkable,” stating that they would contemplate finding new employment or retiring under these conditions.

The NSF survey also highlighted the financial implications of reduced telework flexibility, with nearly half of the respondents citing cost of living and related financial reasons as a key factor driving their desire for more workplace flexibility.

Broader assessments spanning the whole federal workforce rather than individual agencies find similar outcomes. A survey by Federal Times revealed that half of federal employees have sought new horizons since the inception of return-to-office mandates, with a significant portion of the workforce yearning for the autonomy and flexibility that telework affords. As teleworking becomes less prevalent, with 41 percent of federal employees reporting a decrease since the pandemic’s peak, the quest for remote opportunities intensifies, highlighting telework not as a perk but as a pivotal factor in career decisions.

For instance, consider the overwhelming response to remote job listings on the USA Jobs portal, which garnered 17 times more applications than their in-office counterparts. This trend underscores a broader shift in the labor market, where flexibility and autonomy are increasingly prized, presenting a unique challenge to traditional office-centric models.

We can thus anticipate that the consequences of the federal return-to-work mandates will be similar to the surprisingly damaging consequences of the mandates in the private sector. They will cause a substantially higher loss of employees and greater obstacles to staff recruitment than leaders anticipate.

The reality of the post-pandemic environment involves a shift toward employees valuing flexible work arrangements over traditional office-centric models, and to a much greater extent than either corporate or government leaders appreciate. To remain competitive and retain top talent, it is imperative to adopt more adaptive hybrid work policies that reflect the changing dynamics of the modern workplace, ensuring organizational resilience and employee satisfaction.

Dr. Gleb Tsipursky serves as the CEO of the hybrid work consultancy Disaster Avoidance Experts. He is the author of Returning to the Office and Leading Hybrid and Remote Teams.