With federal workers forced to return to office, some wonder how that will work

Two things can be true: The federal government has a lot of office space sitting empty and unused.

And in some cases, there won’t be enough room for all the workers that are coming back to the office. In the short term, it might be uncomfortable or a hassle for some of the workers, but it also might be the precursor to a big change in how the federal workforce goes to work every day going forward.

“On average, these buildings are occupied less than 20 to 25% so there’s a lot of excess space,” said Paul Walden, executive director of the Public Buildings Reform Board. “Granted, a lot of it probably needs some updates to make it really habitable. It’s not class A office space across the board, but there is a lot of excess capacity.”

That’s a big reason why the federal government has been making a conscious effort to sell off and consolidate office space around the country. With the increased use of telework during the pandemic, experts say some agencies really started letting leases end with the belief that those policies would be here to stay. Others took a more measured approach.

How each agency made that decision will impact things in the weeks and months ahead.

“What we’re seeing now is it really is a case-by-case situation in terms of individual agencies and individual facilities,” said Norman Dong, a former Public Buildings Commissioner with the General Services Administration, or GSA, who has also worked with Walden on the PBRB.

“In some cases where agencies had held on to the space, bringing employees back to that building is not going to be a big deal. In other instances, where agencies were assuming maximum telework as they made decisions on lease renewals … they may have given up too much space over the past few years. Now, they’re scrambling a little bit to figure out where to put the employees as they return to the office.”

In some cases, offices might not have enough furniture, or if single-use offices need to become shared office space, the right types of furniture might not be readily available.

“So that’s one of the things that we’re definitely looking at,” said Will Powell, the acting press secretary for GSA.

“A lot of agencies are trying to figure out what their footprint is going to look like, what their needs might be,” he added. “In addition to looking across the owned buildings that we have, the lease spaces, we’re also working with our agency partners on everything from either potential future leases if we need to be able to accommodate employees cohabiting — getting folks into shared space with other agencies.”

You read that right. Historically, on one hand, it’s been easy to lump all federal employees into one federal workforce. But on the other, it was rare that each distinct agency saw it that way.

“I’ve spoken to some agency leadership, and there’s this conception or concept that ‘I’m the Department of ‘ABC’ and I have this flagship building on Pennsylvania Avenue that represents the prestige of my department, and the idea of sharing that prestigious headquarters building that’s been associated with my department for 60 years is just a hard thing to get used to,'” Walden said.

But over time, they might have to. In fact, future federal offices might look more like a WeWork type of lab or open coffee shop than the traditional office you’ve come to associate with white-collar federal work.

“We’ve learned through different pilots that we have done — like the workplace innovation lab, the coworking pilot, that we’ve held in different buildings across the country — that we don’t necessarily need cubicles or standard desks,” Powell said. “A lot of employees have really taken to using flexible drop-in space, or we’ve used conference rooms to hold group and team meetings.”

Going forward, the ability to bring people from different agencies under the same roof appears to be a goal that GSA has, since it’s how workers from various different agencies in various different cities seemed to prefer working.

“We found a lot of emphasis on team rooms, people being able to collaborate and stuff,” Powell said.

This won’t happen in the immediate future for many workers. Dong said some workers can probably expect some headaches.

“If you’ve got a single office, it’s furnished one way. If you’re now going to change that single office to a shared office, it requires a different furniture configuration,” he explained. “You have got to think about ‘all right, how long does it take to procure the furniture?’ Because you may not always have it on hand.”

Powell promised that was an ongoing concern for GSA at the moment and remedies are being looked at. In some cases, conference rooms might get some desks installed instead.

“Sometimes, we let perfect be the enemy of good,” said Dong, who is now a partner at FD Stonewater. He also teaches a course on federal real estate at Georgetown University.

“I think everybody understands the charge that employees are returning to the office. And while the initial setup may not be exactly what people wanted, I think the principle here is to be flexible and to accommodate the employees and make sure that employees have a place to work as they come back to the office,” he added.

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