Many agencies are considering making permanent the more flexible work arrangements they put in place after experiencing “challenges with employees who experienced decreased engagement or employees who found it difficult to maintain a healthy work-life balance during the COVID-19 pandemic. Image: Ira Lichi/Shutterstock.com
By: FEDweek StaffFederal agencies are reassessing themselves in many ways due to the changes in operations the pandemic caused, although a lack of reliable information on telework is complicating those efforts, the GAO has said.
In a look at 24 departments and agencies, GAO said that many “are planning future changes to work arrangements such as flexible work schedules and expanded use of telework and remote work.” In some cases, they surveyed employees and managers, conducted focus groups and in other ways gathered information about the pandemic experience and expectations for work in the future.
Some “are reviewing positions that previously required employees to be on site to determine whether these positions could be telework ready in the future”; many “are reviewing positions that previously required employees to be on site to determine whether these positions could be telework ready in the future”; some are “reconsidering their physical facilities and infrastructure to meet future workforce needs”; and “nearly all agencies are also considering developing or expanding remote work policies based on their experiences with telework during the COVID-19 pandemic,” it said.
Also commonly under consideration are making permanent the more flexible work arrangements they put in place after experiencing “challenges with employees who experienced decreased engagement or employees who found it difficult to maintain a healthy work-life balance during the COVID-19 pandemic . . . with work schedule flexibilities and the changes to work processes during the pandemic, the boundaries between work and home life became blurred, often resulting in employees working longer hours and extended workweeks.”
The GAO said that all the agencies it examined reported increased use of telework due to the pandemic, in terms of numbers of employees eligible, numbers of eligible employees who actually teleworked, and the frequency and number of total hours of telework. That reflects findings of other studies, including the most recent OPM report on telework government-wide.
However, the GAO said it had to develop its own way of measuring telework since problems remain with data reporting to OPM even though GAO has pointed out that issue in a series of reports over a decade.
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