Any other agencies increasing telework flexibilities?
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Anonymous
DP and they are not wrong. In elementary school my kids went to aftercare and I picked them up after work. After the pandemic, they were in middle or high school. The middle schooler was at a school with no buses. With flexibility, I could pick them up at 3 to take them home and then go back to work. They just needed the ride, they didn't need me minding them. But I didn't claim to work 3-5, I worked 3:30-5:30 and sometimes later. I can get a lot done in the evening (night owl). I am also lucky that the commute from work to home and from the school to home were all short. |
This is an ancient and boring debate. I always assume the people who start it didn't do much actual parenting of their own kids or they'd realize how dumb they sound.
Anonymous
Pp here. I’m a senior manager. I could work 6-2:30 which I do frequently. It’s not popular considering I work with west coast on occasion. I’m a high performer and don’t even need to pick my kid up, they walk home. I’ve never not worked when I said I was working. That being said- you’d think managers would have access to IT logs during telework. But nope. |
Anonymous
Good for them. Draw the line. Why should the Fed employees be flexible when the admin has removed all flexibility that benefits the employee? In the example above, that private sector worker has flexibility. So sure, he’s willing to be flexible when it benefits his employer and take the later meeting. I used to be that way too - flexible when needed - when we had telework. |
Anonymous
It’s not reasonable because it’s always just 1-2 gran members who disrupt the schedule for everyone else. And I doubt they are truly working at 6:30 am. |
Anonymous
We have Maxiflex and comp. It’s just a d*ck move to have unusual work hours and then not have the courtesy to use the flexibility we actually do still have. |
Anonymous
Where do you have maxi flex and comp? Staff at my agency are on fixed schedules—even those that telework part of the day. And all staff are required to work 8 hours between certain time of the day. I do not want or need people to work more than 8 hours a day but I do expect them to actually work during those 8 hours, or at least be available to work! Beyond that is a management issue—deadlines that require overtime aren’t the employee’s problem. |
Anonymous
It’s not overtime. It’s maintaining a schedule that allows you to have normal contact with your coworkers and external parties. Which means no, you cannot sign off at 3 and refuse to do anything after that point. most of these 3pm people are also dishonest about their lunch period. I’m fine with people having an early schedule for family or commute reasons but for ffs, if we get telework back, yes I do expect them to get on Maxiflex and be available for calls at 3pm from time to time. |
Anonymous
| Yes, but only our bargaining unit because the union won in arbitration. |
Anonymous
What agency won in arbitration? |
Anonymous
The issue with this is telework needs to be at the benefit of the taxpayer/government. It’s not there as a babysitting service. Too many people abused this and now we’re in the predicament we’re in now. Like you shouldn’t be cancelling childcare because you’re working from home, for instance. They can and will inspect your workplace, and if you have kids running around all day, you’re either neglecting them or neglecting your work, which is fraud. So telework needs to save the taxpayer money, make work more efficient, etc. If you try to spin it as “well it’s easier for me to watch/pickup my kids” then you’re never going to get that back. |
Anonymous
| No, and it is terrible. We had been going in 2x a week and 1x a week, respectively, so one parent was always home to walk the dog and pick up kids. Now our children are in beforecare as well as aftercare and we have a dog walker so we can be on Zoom or Teams meetings all day in our offices. |
Anonymous
So who watched your kids while you were teleworking? You can’t supervise kids who belong in daycare and work at the same time. So you either ripped off the taxpayer with illegal childcare, or neglected your kids. |
Anonymous
This gives me hope. Our arbitration got delayed by the shutdown, but the language in our CBA is pretty good so I'm hopeful we get telework back soon. Our agency also lost something like a third of its senior managers. Lots of opportunities to move up, but no one is willing to do it anymore because they don't want to leave the bargaining unit. |
Anonymous
We demonstrated during the pandemic that telework is more productive (more hours worked, more people available at odd hours / able to get on an early or late call). Agencies have productivity metrics that proved this. Agencies also saved on utilities and janitorial, and had the chance to reduce footprint which is an enormous savings. There is zero plausible argument that telework doesn't save the government money. What kills telework is that it ALSO helps the employee. So many Americans have a hard time with the concept of a win-win. They are sure that if it's good for the employee then it must be bad for the employer. |
Anonymous
DP. When my kids were young, I didn't need after-school care because I finished my work hours before kids came home. I was never taking care of kids while working. But with an hour commute each direction, that's 2 hours of care to make up the difference, purely for commute. When my kids got older, they didn't need "care" but they did need transport to/from school or camp. So RTO means they are sitting in aftercare for lack of a ride, instead of doing stuff on their own at home like any age 10+ kid can do without supervision. |