President Joe Biden has asked Cabinet officials to “aggressively execute” plans to bring federal employees back to their offices, ending a precedent of remote work that started during the COVID-19 pandemic three years ago, according to multiple sources.
Axios first reported that White House Chief of Staff Jeff Zients sent an email on Friday to every member of the Cabinet saying federal agencies must return to in-person work “because it is critical to the well-being of our teams and will enable us to deliver better results for the American people.”
Zients said remote work won’t be completely eliminated, but that in-person time will be prioritized to “build a strong culture, trust, and interpersonal connections” within agencies, according to The Washington Post.
As for the timing, Zients’ memo states, “This is a priority of the President — and I am looking to each of you to aggressively execute this shift in September and October,” according to Axios.
Axios correspondent Alex Thompson told WTOP that Zients has been an outspoken proponent of building a better office culture but there may be other factors, including the urging of D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser, adding to this in-person momentum.
“Basically, it’s going to be an agency-by-agency response,” Thompson said in an interview with WTOP. “And, I think part of the reason why I was able to obtain this letter, in all honesty, is because the administration, and the White House in particular, is trying to lean on all these Cabinet officers to really make a difference and really push and … [make] probably some people uncomfortable.”
The Government Accountability Office reported last month that “17 of the 24 federal agencies used on average an estimated 25% or less of the capacity of their headquarters buildings” during the first three months of 2023.
President Biden has been pushing to bring federal workers back to the office for over a year now. During his State of the Union in March 2022, Biden pledged that “the vast majority of federal workers will once again work in person.”
There has been a similar push in the private sector, as businesses have been trying to bring workers back into the office. According to a June survey by ResumeBuilder, 85% of U.S. office workers were going into the office at least once a week.
