Last week one head-exploding story sparked by the rise of DOGE was the allegation that so many federal workers are allowed to work from home without supervision. Quotes…
“We only have six percent of our federal workforce actually going into work every single day.” – Senator Joni Ernst on FOX News, December 5, 2024
“If you exclude security guards & maintenance personnel, the number of government workers who show up in person and do 40 hours of work a week is closer to 1%!” – Elon Musk, Twitter/X, December 5, 2024
“Most federal workers are eligible to telework and 90 percent of those are…Nearly one-third of federal workers are entirely remote …Service backlogs and delays, unanswered phone calls and emails, and no-show appointments are harming the health, lives, and aspirations of Americans.”– Senator Joni Ernst, “Out of Office: Bureaucrats on the beach and in bubble baths but not in office buildings“.
I read these and many news stories arising from them and, frankly, found the claims hard to believe. As one would expect, the American Federation of Government Employees rushed to defend its members. Given the mission of that organization and its membership, one can reasonably expect it to shade reality and the statistics used to explain it to the public so the federal workers under attack are placed in the best light possible. I don’t trust statistics advanced by interest groups, and neither should anyone else. But just for giggles, let’s assume that all of the statistics raised to rebut federal workforce-bashers in “Exaggerating use and misuse of telework is demeaning attempt to justify job cuts” are 100% accurate, objective and unbiased. Then we know…
- Only 54% of federal workers “work completely in-person at jobs that require them to be on-site each day.”
- Almost half of federal workers, 46.4%, are eligible for “telework.”
- Ten percent of civilian federal personnel are in fully remote positions.
- Among those federal workers who are eligible for telework, 61.2% of regular working hours were spent in-person.
- In the subset of federal workers who work from home but who are not eligible for remote work , 61.2% of working hours are spent at the government workplace. [Note: this comes from the Federation, but it makes no sense.]
- “Only” 228,000, or 10%, of the 2.28 million federal civilian workers, were in positions where there was no expectation that they worked in-person on any regular or recurring basis.
Critics of the efficiency and diligence of the federal workforce don’t have to exaggerate, because those figures are indefensible. The increase in “telework” that resulted from the irresponsible and destructive pandemic lockdown is one more curse on U.S. society inflicted by that self-made national disaster.
One statement that the AFGE quoted was from the butt-covering US Government Accountability Office Report to Congressional Requesters: Federal Telework, November 2024, which claimed,”Telework both increases employee engagement and helps recruit and retain workers who provide vital public services to the American people.” Yeah, I bet it helps with recruitment: who wouldn’t want a job that lets you acquire a generous government pension from home with minimal supervision? But “engagement”? What does that even mean?
I work in my home office, and since my wife died in February, I have had no supervision. One of her jobs was to tell me “Stop checking the baseball stats and get to work making money!” among other orders. Working by yourself is hard, even for someone who is motivated and ambitious like I am. Working at home is particularly inefficient because of the constant interruptions: phone calls, the dog, deliveries, the web, email, unexpected visits and deliveries. The exaggerations by Ernst, Musk, Fox News and others seemed unbelievable, but the contrary statistics cited by those who benefit from them are still indefensible.
Here’s an informed opinion as someone who has worked in an office, supervised staff, and also worked at home and “remotely”…that I am quite confident is a fact: working at an office with hands-on supervision and regular contact with colleagues is the most productive and efficient way to maximize productivity in the vast majority of jobs.
Ethics Alarms 
Jonathan wrote, ” I am quite confident is a fact: working at an office with hands-on supervision and regular contact with colleagues is the most productive and efficient way to maximize productivity in the vast majority of jobs.”
I completely agree.
Who’s this smart guy Jonathan? He’s stealing my work!
LOL!!!
Holy crap, that was a brain fart of epic porportions!
Thanks, boss. I just re-read the post to find “Jonathan”. I’m glad I’m not the only one with the “Who is…?” response.
I’m quite certain that a long line of academic “experts” will disagree, with an armful of studies to back it up.
Of course, it’s the laptop class that publishes studies, not the people turning wrenches, so we’ve got a bit of a perverse incentive problem here.
So I am one of those experts and my first 20 years I worked as a mechanic, so no “perverse incentive problem.” A study than can be replicated is better than any individual’s experience based on sample size alone… following the scientific method.
Is your current job one that allows for remote work? Do you prefer that job to your previous one that did not? Would you prefer to be able to work from home?
If you answered “yes” to these questions, then the incentive remains. It’s completely irrelevant that you once worked a job that required your physical presence.
My current job does allow for remote work, but I also advise people spread across the US. In my previous job, I had to go to an office to advise people spread across the US. Which costs the taxpayer less?
Of course, I prefer to work from home rather than commuting several hours a day. I also would rather save the taxpayer money, which I am doing since I do not get a transportation benefit, etc. than those in the federal government in DC do.
Your incentive argument is the same as a woman who argues that only women can study women or that only a Latino can study other Latinos. My personal incentive is to save money for the taxpayers, especially if it can be based on quantitative evidence.
Similar to your incentive argument, your argument about those who conduct studies is the same. Your argument assumes that only those pure of heart and linked to what they are studying can provide worthwhile information, which is a poor argument. Also along those same lines, if you are not a remote worker or a teleworker then you must have an incentive to push the same on others right? That is a similar argument.
So show me the numbers and not the feelings 😉
Of course the ability to work from home is a direct personal, specific benefit, whereas the more efficient use of taxpayer money is a diffused, general benefit. The employees lounging around the water cooler also pay taxes, yet they enjoy the benefit of not working more immediately, more directly, more personally than any marginal increase to the utility of their taxes.
And if course it’s ludicrous to suggest that this is anything like “only women can study women or that only a Latino can study other Latinos”, because it’s not clear that “studying women/Latinos” has any direct benefit to the studier. If it were true that only women could study women, and those studies consistently came up in favor of special government benefits for women, but flew in the face of everyday experience, don’t you think you would start to question the objectivity of the researchers?
And if course non-teleworkers have no incentive to push in-person work on others, unless others working in person somehow improves their results, which in itself would validate the thesis.
A more apt analogy would be the funding of drug safety/efficacy studies by the companies developing the drugs. It presents an obvious conflict, but who else should foot the bill but the ones who stand to benefit economically?
The problem with the drug company analogy is that, as I pointed out in my original post and after there are cost savings associated with remote and teleworkers (win-win). So is there really a conflict, especially if you do not have proof that being in an office is a more efficient way to operate, in specific situations, other than a sweeping statement? Give me the quantitative evidence and not emotionally driven statements.
I did not make the implication about only women can study women, that may not have been your intended message, but that was how it appeared. Remember that your implied and now explicitly state that the motivation of teleworkers/remote workers is such that individual motivations taint the studies. This implies that only those working in an office should conduct such studies as they do not have self-serving motivations. Of course you later state that explicitly, might I add without proof; it is speculative. Most of these articles and statements that tout the return to the office as a solution are self-motivated to “share the pain.” Again, show me the quantitative, relevant evidence and not feeling driven statements.
I am also not complaining about bearing a financial burden. At no point did I indicate that taxpayers should pay for my office equipment or utilities. I pointed out that such savings were a benefit to the taxpayer, which goes beyond the work that I produce. You imply that the situation cannot be a win-win situation. As any employee, I benefit from benefits and pay from my employer which is personal, the employer and others benefit in a disbursed fashion from my labor. We are also talking about government, which does not (typically) produce a product, but provides services and manages programs, which do not (often) directly benefit individuals.
As a final note. Having more people employed in DC is a economic benefit to them personally since federal employees in DC earn ~$25k extra as a cost of living allowance. If the person can budget most of that money goes into the bank. So who ultimately benefits more from some positions being remote/telework?
Funny… my takeaway from this is that Ernst and Musk are liars. But, of course, we knew that.
Of course they are! They’re not Democrats! Why didn’t I think of that?
I would review all the reporting before concluding anyone is lying. All the numbers above could simultaneously be accurate, depending on the context around them. The headlines are by far the most deceitful thing I’m seeing, as they seem to be sensationalizing out of context. But then, I haven’t listened to Sen. Ernst or the news segments.
But a preliminary review is that Sen. Ernst conducted a review of telecommuting among federal employees. 24 federal agencies were contacted, of which 14 apparently are participating, and only 3 have concluded. It seems her information is coming from that. The report Jack cites looks at 4 federal agencies. So neither the Senate report nor the GAO reply are comprehensive, but are based upon a sampling of federal agencies. Probably a better question is whether Sen. Ernst’s conclusions are fully warranted given that it seems 11 investigations are still ongoing.
Musk’s comment would require some number-crunching to validate, but the original 6% are, from the Senate report, the amount of federal workers that are in-person 100% of the time. I’ve not dug to see if Ernst qualifies that 6% by reporting on total remote hours versus total hours worked, but that is what the GAO focuses on, and why the results between those two are so different. But if we look at the number of federal workers who are in person 100% of the time, and we find that the vast majority are security and maintenance, who have to be onsite in order to do their jobs, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if that 6% drops to 1%.
I think it is appropriate to question the framing of the statistics, since cherry-picking the most egregious-sounding statistics for maximal effect glosses over the fact that most federal employees work from the office most of the time. And I think most people would appreciate a work environment that makes allowance for some limited remote work when things like sickness, unavoidable appointments, or other circumstances require it. At the same time, the sheer amount of abuse that has resulted from remote work makes me question the entire premise of remote work. And the scrutiny the federal government is under given the exploding deficits and debt make any abuse of remote work by federal agents even more egregious.
I’ll weigh back in if I get a chance to review the Senate report and the GAO report in more detail. These were, keep in mind, just first impressions.
What sort of abuses are there?
Is this a serious question? The abuses are essentially not working when working. We’ve seen people vacationing, running second businesses, playing video games, etc, all on the company dime. It is far more difficult for a manager to oversee employees than in the office, and employees without scruples, or with a certain amount of temptation, will end up engaging in activities that are not work and claiming they were working at the time. The really dumb ones post those activities on Facebook. I know a few workers lost their jobs back in 2020/21 when they were found to be out hunting when they claimed their were working, or were actively cashiering at Wal Mart when they were supposed to be handling company documentation.
So what evidence do you have beyond anecdotal evidence?
I do not have quantitative, representative evidence (e.g., a sample of the population being discussed) in either direction when it comes to telework/remote work, so I do not make claims of improved efficiency.
Consider this… according to the Government Performance and Results Act, and the Government Performance and Results Modernization Act, there should be performance data… what does that data indicate?
Also consider, that people often talk about firing employees (usually inferring rank and file, non-supervisory/manager), but what about supervisors and managers? Granted some employees are detritus, but so are some supervisors and managers. What about members of the Senior Executive Service (SES)? Once someone becomes an SES they become just about bullet-proof.
A quick Google search can pull up some surveys and information, such as this: https://upgradedpoints.com/news/what-are-remote-workers-doing-on-the-clock/.
I am somewhat biased against remote work, even though I get to take advantage of it in my current job. My biggest concern stems mostly from reflecting on myself: I am not as productive at home as I am at the office, and it is because of a combination of distractions and temptations. The remote work also blurs the line between being at work and being at home.
Yes, many of those issues can be handled with proper management, training, and experience. And yes, there are people working in the office who abuse work privileges, and managers who do nothing to curb poor behavior in the office. And it may well be that the worst of the offenses have already taken place, and now that companies are better guarding against the moonlighters, day-drinkers, gamblers, and pornographers, maybe those problems are gradually declining.
Maybe.
So one critical aspect of my comment is “representative evidence.” Looking at surveys a key aspect to how representative they are is in how they were performed. The best survey method is a randomized sample, which is also the most difficult since it would require, at a minimum, randomly sampling from only government employees. Even then it is only applicable to the government as a whole and not a specific agency or office.
Are there issues with working from home? 100% Of course I know many people who put in more than an 8 hr day, but do not get paid for their overtime (I am a sample size of 1, so not representative) because they can work from home. We often focus on what we are told, but fail to ask more penetrating questions (e.g., who, when). Taking these arguments purely at face value and/or based largely on our own experiences makes us subject to manipulation and succumbing to our own biases.
Bad workers are bad workers as are bad supervisors and managers… how do you correct the problem? Well you really need to define and identify the problem areas as best as possible.
BTW I would hypothesize that problems are increasing in some areas while decreasing in others.
For maybe three-fourths of all jobs, the work is not monotonous, but has periods of surge and slack.
Like, how a fast food restaurant is practically empty, and then- boom!- a surge of customers that keep the workers going from one place to another.
Albert Einstein came up with “The Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies” while he was on the clock as a patent clerk. His boss was not cheated- Einstein met his quota.
Long ago while studying Human relationships we studied worker and manager relationhips. At the time one categroizaton was that there were four types of worker/managers.
Theory X workers when givn a task completed the task given stemming from internal motivation with little external input.
Theory Y workers required specific instruction and constant direct supervision.
Theory X managers meted out the task and relied on workers getting the task done iregradless of how.
Theory Y managers meted out a task and gave specifice instrution, these instruction were not to be devaited from by the workers.
Of course Theory X workers paired with thery X managerrs were an ideal matrix.
What did nt work well was the combination of Thoery X workers with thoery Y managers or Theory Y workers with theoryy X manageers.
Thus I beleive the issue is not geography but rather a mismatch between worker and manger types.
My wife, a gvernement worker, supervses the Libraires of th Army that are situated world wide interacting with policy makers who are also disseminated world wide.. She meets with them aily, assigns tasks follows up from her home office while garbed in office attire.
In her situation, there is no need for her to occupy a government building to accomplis h her supervisory role. in fact , when she has been at thee office, there were numeros times the IT aspects were inoperabe and she had to teturn home to accomplish her wor.k.
I don’t think there is a one size fits all solution tho this issue. certianly mandates are nto a solution, but apllying management theory may be.
Mrs. OB worked for IBM for the last nearly twenty years of her working career in IT security. (That’s IBM as in I’ve Been Moved, then I’m By Myself, and now India Business Machines.) For a number of years, she had direct reports literally around the globe. Five o’clock AM Mountain Standard Time was the only time she could have all her direct reports on a call at one time. She worked seemingly around the clock most days. Her last gig was in Amsterdam, The Netherlands where everyone was required to go to the office. I’m not sure the Dutch were any more productive because she could see them face to face. Bottom line, I agree that some managers and employees can function well from home, others can’t. I think in large part it’s a company culture thing. Before IBM, she worked for American Express which was much more remote work oriented than IBM was twenty years ago. At AmEx, she always reported to a boss in New York. Twenty years ago, IBM was way behind AmEx in terms of a functioning work from home culture. I’m not sure the federal bureaucracy is a likely candidate for working well from home. That being said, if the government’s office buildings are half empty, half of them should be sold. IBM has divested of a massive amount of office space over the last two decades. It was mindboggling back then to walk around in massive, empty headquarters buildings all over the country.
“… if the government’s office buildings are half empty, half of them should be sold” that is GSA policy that GSA doesn’t often follow. A bigger problem is the rental properties that the government has.
“I read these and many news stories arising from them and, frankly, found the claims hard to believe.”
On the other hand, I have no problem believing this. Obviously, I cannot confirm the statistics regarding how many federal workers are or are not putting their best foot forward when working from home, but I can attest that it’s a problem in the private sector.
I work for a nationally-known company that has utilized remote work since the pandemic. While those who work in our call center have to account for every minute of their shift, there is still some advantage taken by those at home. As our host pointed out, there are distractions at home that are hard to ignore. My company was flexible during the pandemic, but has now reverted to the same work-at-home policy that existed previously: childcare for kids, eldercare for adults, etc. so that employees are not constantly interrupted. It’s obvious that some of our employees have kids running around and televisions on.
Mr. Golden works for a mid-sized regional company. He has two co-workers who had been doing copious amounts of overtime while at home despite the backlog in work items never diminishing to the degree they should have with so many manhours put in. Upper management, of course, realized this and have instituted required in-office days, as well as a freeze on overtime.
If hourly employees rationalize shirking their responsibilities, I can only imagine what salaried employees get away with. It almost certainly is the case with federal employees who seem to think their jobs are secure, regardless of the quality or quantity of their work.
Americans take advantage of loopholes to get more for less. That’s one of our less-endearing traits as a culture.
Here is William A. Levinson’s perspective.
https://www.qualitydigest.com/inside/quality-insider-column/yahoo-vs-henry-ford-042213.html
I guess it depends on the nature of not just the job, but the business as well.
It is based on a lot of different factors that are often ignored or glossed over during these types of conversations. For example, if I dislike you bringing us together, physically, does not ensure that I will like you, I may learn to despise you more. Some work requires fairly intense concentration like doing data work that requires quiet regardless of where you do it. There is not “one ring to rule them all” or one policy that fits all situations.
Yeah, that makes sense.
Hmmm, is that just American culture or is this something common of humans in general?
I think any human being has the capacity to take advantage of perceived loopholes to benefit himself or herself; however, Americans have a long history of pushing against the grain. In some respects, that’s a good thing, At the other pole, our independent natures combined with the worst excesses of consumer culture have created a mindset that rationalizes prioritizing what we want even if it’s at the expense of others.
I agree that there is definitely an aspect of American culture that is sociopathic, but Chinese culture is very much the same, albeit for (likely) different reasons. Although, I think overall I would trust that someone in the US would volunteer to help their fellow American much fast than someone in China would help their countryman.
No doubt. We are a compassionate and charitable people when we want to be.
What does hands-on supervision accomplish?
Does it compensate for the commute?
I think hands on supervision is considered the antidote to slug employees.
There is no supervising the slug out of an employee.
Then they can at least be fired more promptly.
That’s assuming there is competent leadership. But the reality is paperwork, including that to fire someone is paperwork.
So filling out electronic forms is more effective in person?
Also consider that the supervisor hired the employee.
It appears there is an assumption that supervisors/managers are actually effective. There seems to be a belief that it is always the employees’ fault. Additionally, consider that “… fired more promptly” assumes that electronic forms are more efficiently filled out in-person.
Supervisors/managers (especially members of the Senior Executive Service) are often protected even when they do egregious things.
No doubt about it. However, when an employee is scheduled to answer phones from 2 PM-5 PM and you find that calls are backing up because this person isn’t answering the phone but streaming a movie on his iPad, this isn’t a management problem, it’s an employee problem. It affects the customer service that customers receive when they call which impacts the business’ reputation.
In my earlier post, I mentioned that my spouse’s company has a backlog of work that needs catching up. He was doing overtime to help, but that was stopped because two co-workers (who are still working at the company, in fact) racked up huge numbers of overtime hours while working at home with no discernable impact on the backlog that their overtime hours would have reasonably affected.
It rather reminds me – morbidly, of course – of that scene in Schindler’s List when Ralph Fiennes has an inmate demonstrate how quickly a hinge can be made only to turn the tables on the inmate by confronting him about the small pile of hinges completed in the many hours he’d ostensibly been working.
Thankfully, American businesses are not concentration camps, but the capacity for goofing off is an easy temptation for American workers, especially when they get the idea that they are not being watched.
Out of sight, out of mind, I suppose.
Hands-on supervision means the employers are getting the work for which they are paying, rather than bad PR from customers who have to wait a long time to receive assistance from employees that are watching Netflix instead of answering the phone or processing that payment.
If the employees could be trusted to do the work at home and save the commute, the employers could then save on electricity, water/sewage and other bills.
It does depend on not just the nature of the tasks performed, but the nature of the business as well.
So let’s break this down…
Now for a couple of questions… prior to COVID:
Ok let’s take into consideration a few points…
Is telework/remote work difficult? It sure can be, but working in an office does not ensure efficiency, especially when people take extended lunches and engage in “water cooler” chat. It position should have been assessed (this often does not happen) so that performance metrics can be developed. Without solid performance metrics we do not KNOW what is efficient or not.
I’m happy to debate this since part of my trade is workforce efficiency.
I can’t tell you how happy it makes me when a new commenter debuts with a Comment of the Day…like this. Unfortunately, such commenters are usually single-issue participants, but maybe you’ll break the mold. Thanks for this.
Thank you. I will try to break the mold 🙂 Long time lurker, first time poster 🙂
Long time lurker, first time poster. I will try and break the mold good sir.
Thank you, I will try to break the mold. I have been a long-time lurker and now I am a first-time poster 🙂
I think the Federation is saying that the workers who are ineligible to work from home are only improperly working home 38.8% of the time (100%-61.2%).
That’s definitely one possible reading of the statistic.
Alternately, this may indicate that workers who are ineligible for working from home still have a high percentage of “out of office” time – For instance, a mine safety inspector who spends half their time on the road inspecting a variety of locations may not be deemed to be at the government workplace during those working hours. It would depend on how narrowly the government workplace is defined in this context – if this is looking at office space utilization, we may be seeing something that is skewed by this.
My perspective is a bit different. While I am not a Federal employee, I have worked from home for 12 years. In that time, I have advanced in my career, completed countless hours of work, and have always had someone I reported to regularly.
Working from home is certainly ripe for abuse, but it’s also wonderful for those who can be self-disciplined. I have zero commute time, and save a ton of money in gas, lunches/coffees, etc.
I often end up working more hours than I’m technically paid to do, because it’s here and easy to work. Sure, I can run the laundry or dishwasher on my lunch break, but I can also check email easily at 9 pm, or work an extra hour at the end of the day before dinner.
Ultimately, working at home isn’t good or bad. It’s a location, but a good worker is a good worker, regardless of where they do the work. From a social standpoint, it’s not for everyone, some folks need in person interaction, I’m just not one of those people. I appreciate the ability to work without being surrounded by people, music in the background when I’m not in a meeting, and focusing on what I need to accomplish.
As a farmer said to his son one day while he was supervising work being done and questioned about why he does not take a day off when he has employees doing the work for him, “Son, your shadow is your best fertilizer.”
I can think of two possibilities here. Either:
I think there is a simpler explanation for one of these statistics.
How likely is it that these percentages for quite different subgroups are exactly the same? Did someone just copy down the wrong number?
Also, the second sentence, as Jack pointed out, actually makes no sense. I think there was a copy/paste that didn’t copy the right sentence. So I think we really have absolutely no idea what the second sentence was supposed to be. Let’s just toss it out altogether until we can determine what the actual study was supposed to be showing.