Federal Manager's Daily Report

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The GSA has said it wants “to understand more about how the shift to a hybrid environment—one in which some employees are remote, some are in the office, and some split time between the two—affects employee, team, and agency outcomes.:

That was among the priorities of the agency’s initial agency evaluation plan under the Foundations for Evidence-Based Policymaking Act of 2018, which among other things requires agencies to produce such plans to build and use evidence in their decision-making.

While the GSA document applies only to that agency, the themes it raises are broadly applicable across government, especially as agencies prepare to begin carrying out long-stalled “reentry” plans to bring more teleworking employees back to standard worksites, at least on a more frequent basis.

GSA said that topics to be examined include: how will the return to facilities impact employee engagement, satisfaction, health, and productivity; and to what extent do team structures (e.g., all remote, hybrid, all in the office) affect individual, team outcomes, and agency outcomes.

It adds: “The pandemic has created a difficult environment for any inference that uses point-in-time measurement that coincides with a return to the physical office space and the wider reopening of society. Drawing too strong of an inference on employee engagement, for example, could be conflated with general trends like positive shifts in mindset due to a return to a more ‘normal’ or different pattern of life (e.g., a person’s partner returns to the office and allows for more concentrative work at home or reduces stress over shared use of space).”

“A second challenge is related to causal identification and likely personnel selection issues. It is likely that some amount of employee choice will be allowed that will sort employees into those who for whatever reason are more inclined to work remotely or in the office. Simple comparisons of employees in different environments are likely to be biased or incomplete,” it says.

One of the other three other priority topics for in the plan is the related issue of the impact of increased reliance on flexible work policies on the demand for federal office space. The others relate to Biden administration priorities: reducing administrative barriers for GSA customers, especially those that have a disproportionate impact on underserved communities; and promoting use of electric or other zero emission vehicles.

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