From Government Executive:
The Social Security Administration is at risk of “losing many staff in the near term” in part as a result of the decision to largely ban telework across government, the Government Accountability Office said in a new reportFriday.
According to GAO, telework had already been in decline at SSA when President Trump returned to the White House and issued a presidential memorandum banning telework in most instances in the federal workplace. …
Among those survey respondents stating that they planned to leave in the next year, almost half indicated that their respective work units’ telework or remote work options influenced their intent to leave the organization,” GAO wrote. “SSA officials told us these staff were likely considering leaving for more work or remote work opportunities, citing employee exit survey results and anecdotal discussions with managers . . . As a result, SSA was at risk of skills gaps in key occupations.” …
Throughout the report, GAO describes efforts by SSA leadership to downplay the impact of telework on its recruitment and retention issues, only to be contradicted by interviews with frontline workers, who stressed the importance of the workplace flexibility. …
Let's see, one government agency that loves telework creates a report that states another government agency that loves telework is harmed by less telework. Got it. We get it. People love their telework. That fact doesn't mean we are better with it. I love blowing bubble gum bubbles. Would it be professional if I blew bubbles all day long - at meetings, in front of customers, etc. We'd be better off letting the people that want to leave due to telework restrictions leave and eventually replace them with people that come in knowing telework isn't a way of life. People's minds were infected by telework during Covid, that doesn't mean we should retain it at previous levels. You can't train people effectively with telework, and we are too slim on staffing to not need nearly all employees in the office each day. Time to move on from that topic. It's a relic of a blip in time.
ReplyDeleteWhat you miss is that telework wasn’t some new product of COVID. The Telework Enhancement Act was in 2010 and designed to use telework to (1) attract talent that in areas where government pay can’t compete with the private sector and (2) ease taxpayer burden in facilities that aren’t needed. For many feds, this was part of the calculus for taking a job with the government: a little less lay that is made up for with telework. Taking away promised telework (which was contractual to many employees) is an effective pay cut when you factor in commutes, paying to park at many offices, extra childcare because the commute pushes back your time to return home. This isn’t a situation where everyone was hired without telework, got it for COVID, then just it. You have over a decade’s worth of hires where it was part of the deal. When they closed some offices and made units remote a few years back, the agency ENCOURAGED people to move wherever they wanted.
DeleteAnd where’s the benefit? Bringing employees in to occupy unnecessary cubes and offices and talk to each others using Teams? There’s no big increase in face-face collaboration. We’re spread everywhere and can’t have face to face chats without taxpayer funded travel. Productivity has, based on internal metrics, taken a 15 percent hit based on people being far more strident about a work/ home separation (no skipped breaks, no taking calls or returning emails after hours).
That's the RAGE plan: Retire All Government Employees, courtesy of Curtis Yarvin, JD Vance's favorite Christian Nationalist "philosopher" and unapologetic racist.
ReplyDeleteWe get it. They've proved their point. They can make our lives miserable by yanking telework, throwing everyone on the 1-800# lines regardless of position, increasing the volume and complexity of workloads without any additional compensation, halting promotions, refusing to hire anyone to replace those leaving the agency, renaming and reorganizing every unit and throwing the entire org chart into chaos, eliminating perks like the vision program, demoralizing us with the five bullet points etc, undermining our entire mission with things like the DOGE data leaks or the falsified death records earlier this year, mocking us by giving us a boss splitting his time between two agencies.
ReplyDeleteI get it. They own me, they own my career, and they can do whatever they want. Now that the point is proven, can we please go back to a more reasonable posture on this stuff?
Congratulations! You have made the acceptance stage!
DeleteThe five stages of grief – denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance.
In other news, water is wet.
ReplyDeleteThe pay is low for most employees; the work is complex and hard to learn; job security and stability are gone after the past year; and work/life balance has been shattered; morale is non-existent.
What does this accomplish? Anyone that can retire or that is marketable enough to find jobs elsewhere will leave. SSA will be left with those who are counting down until they can retire; the problem employees that screw up more cases than they work correctly yet are never held accountable by management; and anyone who is desperate for a job, but will leave the second they find a better offer in the private sector.
And it’s exactly what happened. The little deferred resignation deal only sped it up. And yet there are still millions of morons out there who think Trump is Social Security’s protector and savior.
ReplyDeleteSurprise, surprise. Those is us driving in notice how light traffic is on Mondays and Fridays. Someone is getting telework despite us being told that private businesses are in 5 days a week. The whole notion of coming in 5 days is also at odds with the agency’s push to steer people to use mySSA and the 800 number. We are asking the public to stay home but demanding that workers be onsite.
ReplyDeleteAnyone who can leave for a job that allows full-time telework and comparable pay, will leave federal employment, especially at SSA. The workloads are unmanageable, and the leadership just keeps pushing workers to work faster. The quality of the work has suffered in the last year.
ReplyDeleteFinally this blog doesn’t censor telework talk. My division has lost 50% of employees. Morale is at zero and productivity is terrible. Telework would solve everything.
ReplyDeleteStill in the denial stage!
DeleteI wonder how employees at SSA who voted for this administration feel these days. Elections have consequences.
ReplyDeleteWhat's so terrible about going into the office? Anti social?
ReplyDeleteMostly it's the 20 hours/week of sleep and family time that I lose to the commute. From home, my unit was all about the work, but in the office, everything feels a lot more high school cliquey and political. My work is 100% electronic with no printing, no paper, and all meetings are on Teams, so I derive no benefit from being there. It doesn't help that my environment is loud as hell, either. I got a lot more done when I could just knuckle down and focus. I was happier when I was eating and sleeping better. The office isn't torture or anything... it's just that wfh is 1000% better.
DeleteSounds like you ought to move closer to the office.
DeleteIt’s that, for many of us, it was basically part of the compensation package. They like to talk about COVID telework, but most of us had telework to some degree well before COVID. My unit had it three days per week since 2013. Having a little less pay than the private sector was okay because it was accounted for with no commute, eating lunch at home, etc. Now I’m commuting two hours per day to park in a $10 per day lot that the government sold to a campaign contributor.
DeleteWhy would I want to go to the office? What does being anti-social have to do with it? My job doesn’t require socializing with coworkers and I’m not one of the lonely coworkers that have no friends outside of the workplace. I’m supposed to go in so someone else can socialize with me? GTF away from me, I’ve got work to do. I would rather spend free time with my kids and friends and not listening to Bob complaining about his wife. And I don’t get the obsession with being in the office. Aren’t we supposed to reduce waste? Who is paying the 24/7 security staff and the cleaning ladies? Rent? Electricity? Water? Maintenance? And govt footing our transportation cost each month. Billions of dollars wasted each month because some boomers are obsessed with spending time in the office because they hate their out of office life. So glad I’m on a telework RA and don’t have to deal with this bullshit.
DeleteWell, the FO is a different beast. Teleclaims or not, with the not beingcomplexity of the job, limited staffing, and horse crap training, regular telework is a disaster. The staff needs bodies around for routine shortages and immediate assistance. Asking a question of a peer over Teams at home while working the front desk or answering phone calls is highly inefficient and the needs for assistance happens multiple times a day often for even experienced staff. The forcing of telework on the FO was a disaster even if the staff "liked" it. It simply doesn't fit. Anybody who says it does, is not being honest.
DeleteThe only telework we are getting in FO world these days is Saturday OT, and enforced telework on weather days. . .
ReplyDelete