How is your federal agency implementing telework?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Partial days of telework allowed, by telework agreement with strict work hours observed.

Ad-hoc telework for a few reasons, with supervisor approval—need to document in writing every time. The hours of telework per pay period are tracked.

Credit hours are allowed by telework, so people take leave and work the time back at home occasionally.

It’s just a ton of work for supervisors and not consistently implemented. Wish we could just go back to something more uniform—like mandatory core days/and core hours, with optional telework for the rest.

Interesting. At my small agency we are not allowed to earn credit hours on any day we take leave (of any kind).

To answer the original question: supervisors can approve up to 10 hours per pay period for (a pretty liberal set) of reasons. Department heads can approve up to 40 hours per pay period. So in practice small departments get to work from home a lot more than bigger departments.

[Anonymous]

Officially 26 days per year. Unofficially partial and full telework is more widespread and will remain that way unless/until they audit badge swipes.

[Anonymous]

5 days with no exception per year. A variety of other circumstances allow for an ad hoc day. Cannot resemble recurring telework at all.

I now show up and leave precisely 8.5 hours later. They can’t have one extra minute of my time. I’m never looking for another promotion so I don’t care. I also take full sick days now for a one hour appointment, take days off when previously I would have taken a couple hours to take one of my (not needing supervision on a day off middle and high schoolers) kids to do something fun, etc.

[Anonymous]

Officially 0 days (was 2 days/week pre-COVID) but with flexibility.

I am now meticulous about starting and ending on time. Although I'm also willing to let the office bores talk to me for ages, because evidently that's building cohesion or something.

Wish the goal were productivity.

[Anonymous]

At a medium agency and there is "talk" of reintroducing 1-2 telework days per week.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:At a medium agency and there is "talk" of reintroducing 1-2 telework days per week.

My agency is talking about this too but it will be that people can ad hoc 1 or two days a week and no one will ask questions about it.

[Anonymous]

Quit that shit. Don't have to deal with it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Quit that shit. Don't have to deal with it.

+1 I'm on my way out.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We can ad hoc telework but it must be for a doctors appointment, contractor in the house, etc. it’s not supposed to be very often but there are people who do it every week. It has to be approved.

Same at my office. They actually told a colleague she was teleworking for doctor appointments too often and she needed to take more leave. To echo what a previous poster said, the focus is disallowing telework rather than getting anything done. Anyway, she politely pushed back that such comment is discrimination as she had followed all procedures and I think they dropped it.

This is my agency too. We are allowed but only ad hoc and must be approved in advance.

[Anonymous]

Pre Covid we could telework 4 days a week, in office one day.

Now we are in office 50% and have lost a lot of STEM staff.

Now when I have a medical appointment I just take the whole day as sick leave instead of working from home before or after the appointment. Same with sick days - I take my sick leave and do not work at all now on sick leave days.

[Anonymous]

We can telework 2 days a week.

[Anonymous]

We have zero telework. No ad hoc, no situational, no telework agreements to even sign. We had 2 days a week telework before all of this.

[Anonymous]

About one day per month. We’ve lost so many people that congress is asking questions.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Officially 26 days per year. Unofficially partial and full telework is more widespread and will remain that way unless/until they audit badge swipes.

They are already auditing our badge swipes. We’ve been warned.

[Anonymous]

They're not implementing it.