I’m a fed returning in January. Managers are returning before non supervisors.

Anonymous wrote:At Interior MIB, we heard rumblings about being asked to come back between Jan and March but do not have any new guidance on the process. They changed our telework and remote work policies and made it easier (less approvals) to telework, so once max telework is removed, I imagine a lot of us will just continue to telework or remote work.

Think again. My bureau got our notice this week. I heard DOI had finalized and all bureaus will be getting theirs soon

We’re still supposed to be back to our pre-pandemic schedule the first week in January. Many of us already teleworked a few days/week in the before times so that’s what we’re supposed to do in January. No one has said anything about delaying the return which had been delayed several times in the fall. I also have no info about whether we’ll be doing in-person meetings or zooming within the office. Without in-person meetings I don’t see any point in commuting in and sitting in my office and never interacting with anyone.

For those of you going back in January/Feb, have you signed new telework agreement for 2022?

No hard "marching orders" at my agency. We started allowing people to voluntarily return to the office in mid November, but subject to strict capacity limits + vaccine/mask mandates.

I will probably start going in one day per week after the New Year, once my family has completed our holiday travels.

At Interior MIB, we heard rumblings about being asked to come back between Jan and March but do not have any new guidance on the process. They changed our telework and remote work policies and made it easier (less approvals) to telework, so once max telework is removed, I imagine a lot of us will just continue to telework or remote work.

We're still all remote, but we were majority remote before COVID. A friend of mine who has been remote for 5 years now just got a big promotion. My agency is super telework oriented.

We were told last Friday that we will report back starting mid Jan to mid Feb in 3 phases with no additional info provided and no science-based logic provided. I don't think it's going to happen.

About 30% of my small agency have already returned, as their jobs can't be done remotely. The rest of us seem to be on indefinite remote.

HHS delayed. Was supposed to have everyone back in January. They have not provided a new timeframw.

All meaning all Departments on January 8th? How did USAID get a March 2022 notice then? Is State Department going back in January?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Any other feds get their marching orders this week? We all just got 30 day notices on our return to work.

Personally I do want to return to work, but even I was shocked. Coworkers are a little bitter.

About time. Some of us have had to come in the whole time due to our classified nature of work. Its amazing how many folks claiming to work from home have been slacking. Hell to get hold of CO which would be instant has been taking weeks.

My dh has been working in person the whole time. But it meant I had to pick up A LOT of slack with schools and daycare. Daycare hours are too short for my workday (and public school is only 6.5 hours!!) and elementary school has had a lot of outages/quarantines and half days. And no camps running to fill in. Maybe this will be the push to get childcare to reopen fully. Afterschool was fully booked by the time we bought a house and moved in (July).

Anonymous wrote:Any other feds get their marching orders this week? We all just got 30 day notices on our return to work.

Personally I do want to return to work, but even I was shocked. Coworkers are a little bitter.

About time. Some of us have had to come in the whole time due to our classified nature of work. Its amazing how many folks claiming to work from home have been slacking. Hell to get hold of CO which would be instant has been taking weeks.

There was some upset about our telework policies. We were all placed on situational telework during the pandemic. They made a huge push for us to all sign FY22 telework plans. And now we're getting told that if you're on situational telework you have to email boss every time you want to telework and it's just for personal appointments or extraneous circumstances. We're all trying to get on core telework plans instead, so we can telework at least 1 day a week. It was kind of a bait and switch.

Any other feds get their marching orders this week? We all just got 30 day notices on our return to work.

Personally I do want to return to work, but even I was shocked. Coworkers are a little bitter.