The Office of Personnel Management is sharing initial details with internal employees on what the federal return-to-office mandate will look like for OPM’s own staff members.
Starting March 3, OPM employees are expected to report to work on-site full-time, OPM Acting Director Charles Ezell told employees Wednesday evening in an all-staff email, obtained by Federal News Network.
Ezell described his email as a “preview” of the agency’s return-to-office plans, adding that OPM will host a town hall next week to share more details with employees.
“As with any operational change, we know we will encounter challenges, but I am confident that you will bring the same diligence and innovation to this process as you have countless other efforts we have undertaken at OPM,” Ezell wrote in the email to OPM employees.
Ezell’s email comes in response to a Jan. 23 memo outlining how agencies are expected to respond to President Donald Trump’s directive to end remote work in the federal workforce. The OPM guidance clarified that the mandate applies to both teleworkers and remote workers, but that there are exemptions for employees with disabilities, qualifying medical conditions or other “compelling reasons.”
Emerging return-to-office plans may vary by agency, but agencies in the executive branch are expected to similarly issue implementation plans to return their employees to the office full-time.
In the OPM email, Ezell outlined plans for agency employees based on whether they have a telework or a remote work agreement, and where employees are currently located. Ezell directed employees currently on a telework or remote work agreement within 50 miles of an OPM facility to begin working on-site full-time by March 3.
The email, however, raises questions for agency employees currently on remote work agreements who are located more than 50 miles from any OPM facility. Employees in that situation are being directed to either report to the closest facility anyway, or otherwise make plans to relocate nearer to an OPM facility.
Nine OPM locations were listed in the email as duty stations with “potential capacity” for current agency employees to begin working on-site full-time. The locations included OPM’s headquarters building in Washington, D.C., as well as agency offices located across Pennsylvania, Georgia, Texas and Virginia.
Mika Cross, a federal workplace expert and consultant, said the on-site transition would cause “significant hardship” and be “life-changing” for remote federal employees, many of whom have had remote work agreements in place since years before the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Given the office locations, some employees might face substantial financial challenges, especially in high-cost housing markets like D.C. and Northern Virginia,” Cross wrote in an email to Federal News Network. She added that a return-to-office would be difficult for federal employees who have caregiving and parental responsibilities. Many others who have to relocate could also run into challenges with spouses or partners who would also need to either relocate or find a different job.
In the email, Ezell said OPM is reviewing its facilities to determine how much space is available for all employees to work on-site. The agency then plans to station employees at various facilities based on the review.
Depending on the results of OPM’s review, it’s unclear what the agency’s plans will be if there is not enough office space to accommodate all employees returning to work on-site full-time. After the federal workforce continued operating in a hybrid work environment following the COVID-19 pandemic, many agencies began scaling down their office holdings and making plans to shed millions more square feet of office space in the coming years — an effort that could save $60 billion over the next decade.
Brian Elliott, an executive advisor on the future of work and a workplace culture expert, questioned how the return-to-office directive would impact productivity of teams of employees who may end up getting stationed at different federal facilities, and potentially across different time zones.
“A lack of certainty about which location you would be assigned to, combined with a lack of clarity about what a relocation package would look like, is not going to instill any confidence whatsoever in people, and looks to an outside observer like an effort simply to continue to sow chaos,” Elliott said in an interview. “A forced commute on a five-day-a-week basis, when your team is distributed, especially across time zones, is an impediment to efficiency. A 50-mile commute means if you’re expected to be in the office at 9 a.m., you’re probably commuting for an hour beforehand — that’s an hour, if you happen to be based on the west coast, that you don’t have to collaborate with your east coast colleagues.”
OPM declined to share further details on office space availability or relocation plans for employees. OPM did not immediately comment on how many currently remote OPM employees would be impacted by the relocations.
In the email, however, Ezell said OPM is working with the General Services Administration on the availability of additional space.
Any employees who are assigned to a duty station more than 50 miles from where they are geographically located will receive a “directed geographic reassignment letter,” Ezell said.
“Upon acceptance of the reassignment, the agency will develop relocation packages for these employees,” Ezell wrote.
According to OPM’s telework policy, included in a report to Congress in 2024, if a remote employee accepts a directed reassignment, then OPM “may be required” to cover moving expenses as applicable. If an employee declines reassignment, the agency may have to provide severance pay or discontinued service retirement.
Additionally, “changing the official worksite may affect an employee in a number of ways, including rates of pay, reduction in force (RIF) competitive areas, travel reimbursement and unemployment compensation,” OPM’s policy states.
OPM’s policy also states that “the agency will provide notice to and bargain with the union, to the extent required by law, when requiring a bargaining unit employee to relocate from a remote duty location.”
According to the email from Ezell, OPM managers and supervisors should begin reporting to their assigned worksite full-time by Feb. 24 to “allow time to review space readiness and make adjustments prior to the March 3 increased in-person reporting of non-supervisors,” Ezell wrote.
Ezell also said employees who accept the “deferred resignation” option will be exempt from the return-to-office mandate. The request from the Trump administration’s OPM earlier this week asked federal employees across government to reply by Feb. 6 if they are choosing to resign from their jobs.
“For those of you who elect to remain in your current position, I want to thank you for working with us to increase our in-person work posture,” Ezell wrote in the Jan. 29 email.
But the “deferred resignation” offer is sparking major legal questions. Many experts are warning federal employees to exercise extreme caution before deciding whether to accept the offer. Federal unions and Democratic lawmakers are also urging federal employees to stay in their jobs.
The return-to-office directive also appears to align with the Trump administration’s efforts to reduce the overall size of the federal workforce. In a November 2024 op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, leaders of the Department of Government Efficiency outlined initial plans to return federal employees to the office full-time.
“Requiring federal employees to come to the office five days a week would result in a wave of voluntary terminations that we welcome: If federal employees don’t want to show up, American taxpayers shouldn’t pay them for the COVID-era privilege of staying home,” the Nov. 20 op-ed, written by billionaire Elon Musk and former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, stated.
In contrast, many federal agencies have reported improved retention and productivity, as well as significant cost savings, with the incorporation of telework flexibilities for eligible employees.
Cross and Elliott raised additional concerns about the negative impacts of returning federal employees to the office full-time. They said the return-to-office directive will worsen retention rates of federal employees, and therefore the ability for agencies to continue effectively delivering services to the public.
More broadly, relocations of federal employees can cause major disruptions to productivity, according to Cross. That can be due to logistical challenges and the stress of moving, as well as the need for employees to have time to adjust to new work routines and environments.
“Properly managed relocations, with comprehensive support and benefits, can enhance employee loyalty and reduce turnover,” Cross said. “But poorly managed relocations can lead to early attrition, negatively affecting hiring, productivity, team morale and engagement.”
Elliott added that a broad return-to-office directive would likely lead to the most productive and efficient employees leaving the workforce.
“The people that can more easily find employment elsewhere tend to be the ones that you need to keep the most,” Elliott said. “You have a shortage in the workforce of technical skills, technical workers and frontline workers.”
“Monitoring people because they happen to be showing up in an office doesn’t mean they were working,” Elliott added. “It’s really easy to tell if somebody is being productive and doing high quality work because you’re monitoring it through the digital tools they use, not through the size of the imprint of your behind on a seat.”
The post OPM’s return-to-office plans include relocating some remote workers first appeared on Federal News Network.