Overview
On January 20, 2025, President Donald Trump issued a presidential memorandum (PM) mandating a full return to in-person work for federal employees, effectively ending remote work arrangements within the executive branch. Full language of the PM is as follows,
Heads of all departments and agencies in the executive branch of Government shall, as soon as practicable, take all necessary steps to terminate remote work arrangements and require employees to return to work in-person at their respective duty stations on a full-time basis, provided that the department and agency heads shall make exemptions they deem necessary.
This memorandum shall be implemented consistent with applicable law.
For the federal workforce, “telework” and “remote work” are two different types of work arrangements (Friedman, Reference Friedman2025a; U.S. Government Accountability Office [GAO], 2024). Federal employees with telework agreements are expected to report to their “official duty stations” on a “regular and recurring basis.” This is similar to what has become commonly referred to since COVID-19 as “hybrid” work. However, remote employees are generally not expected to report onsite at an agency. The distinction is important in that employees with a remote work arrangement may reside geographically distant from an agency office. Additional guidance from the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) indicated the order applied to all employees and those assigned to a duty station more than 50 miles from where they resided would receive a geographic reassignment letter (Friedman, Reference Friedman2025b).
Approximately 2.2 million civilians are currently employed as federal workers, making the federal government the nation’s largest employer (Desilver, Reference Desilver2025). Of these, 43% were identified as participating in some form of telework during the 2023 fiscal year (U.S. Office of Personnel Management, 2024). This marks the lowest recorded percentage of teleworkers since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, even though 57% of federal employees were deemed eligible to telework during the same year (the highest recorded percentage since OPM began collecting telework data in 2012; U.S. Office of Personnel Management, 2024). Over a million federal employees will be expected to restructure their work schedules and routines to accommodate fully in-person work. This is particularly concerning for the 228,000 employees who held remote positions with no expectation of in-office work as of May 2024—approximately 10% of the entire federal workforce (Office of Management and Budget, 2024).
On January 27, 2025, OPM issued implementation guidance that directed agencies to revise their remote/telework policies and order employees to work in person, full-time. Additional guidance was provided on February 12 that provided an exclusion for military spouses. OPM’s guidance recommended agencies prepare implementation plans that describe their approach and readiness to comply with the PM and submit them for approval no later than February 7, 2025. Guidance emphasized agencies should prioritize in-person work, create phases for return for those working more than 50 miles from their assigned duty station, and maximize use of federally owned or leased spaces. Further, agencies were asked to delineate their process for determining exceptions based on disability, medical condition, or other “compelling reasons” as defined by the agency’s needs.
Given the logistics and intricacies of carrying out such large-scale change, actual implementation of the PM is likely to vary. This is further complicated by OPM’s suggestion that agencies target short 30-day deadlines to comply. For example, the Department of Homeland Security quickly announced directives to enforce a return to in-person work on the same day the PM was released (Doubleday, Reference Doubleday2025). Relatedly, the Environmental Protection Agency has stated near-term targets of employees’ return-to-office and outlined multiple phases according to whether employees are designated as teleworkers or as remote workers, as well as whether they currently live within or outside of the 50-mile radius from their duty station (Heckman, Reference Heckman2025). Overall, agencies appear to be approaching the PM and OPM’s guidance by executing phased returns to the office, with the most accommodating return deadlines assigned to employees working farthest away from their assigned job location.
Although agencies are showing their intention to follow the requirements of the PM, there are ongoing challenges related to the legality and consequences of these mandates. For example, in late February 2025, OPM announced its requirement for all its remote working employees to report to their Washington office by March 7. Importantly, some employees who live thousands of miles away had to decide between moving or potentially losing their position. The PM is also under appeal in that federal employee unions have argued it violates existing collective bargaining agreements (Jamieson, Reference Jamieson2025). Thus, unions have stated such actions are a potentially unlawful attack on civil service workers and could be interpreted as an attempt to force people to quit (Alper & Reid, Reference Alper and Reid2025). These allegations are also backed by unions’ intentions to file lawsuits on behalf of their members. Despite this, the Trump administration has asserted its position that union contract language allowing telework and remote work are invalid (Niedzwiadek, Reference Niedzwiadek2025).
Prior federal policy
Federal government employee access to remote work preceded the COVID-19 pandemic. Indeed, federal and state governments were among some of the early leaders of the telecommuting movement (Allen et al., Reference Allen, Golden and Shockley2015; Avery & Zabel, Reference Avery and Zabel2001). Federal agencies have used remote work to help accomplish their missions, manage operations, and support employee work–life balance (U.S. Government Accountability Office, 2024). In 1989, President George Bush publicly endorsed telecommuting to attract and retain employees, reduce office space costs, and reduce pollution and traffic congestion. The Telework Enhancement Act of 2010 provided government agencies a framework to better leverage the use of telecommuting to advance agency missions, manage talent and remain competitive with other industries, and be resilient in emergency situations (Ahuja, Reference Ahuja2023). Those guidelines were updated in 2021. On June 23, 2014, President Obama issued a PM that enhanced flexible work options for the federal workforce. The order stated, “To attract, empower, and retain a talented and productive workforce in the 21st century, the Federal Government must continue to make progress in enabling employees to balance their responsibilities at work and at home.” Employees were given the right to request access to flexible work, including telework. In his 2022 State of the Union address, Biden expressed the desire for federal workers to return to the office, signaling a return to normal following the widespread adoption of remote work prompted by COVID-19 (Katz, Reference Katz2022). Memos issued in 2023 provided guidance to agencies on how to evaluate their telework and remote work policies in connection to workforce considerations such as productivity, recruitment, and retention (Ahuja, Reference Ahuja2023). However, efforts to return federal employees to the office were met by resistance; many workers stated they were more productive working from home and that they reinvested the time saved commuting into their work (Scheiber, Reference Scheiber2025). Research supports such claims as estimates indicate the average daily time savings when working from home is 72 min, and on average workers return 40% of that time back to their employers (Aksoy et al., Reference Aksoy, Barrero, Bloom, Davis, Dolls and Zarate2023).
Remote work and productivity
Although supporters of return-to-office argue it restores workplace efficiency, there is no evidence that working from home results in less productivity than does working from a central office. Rather, most research suggests no effect or in some studies a positive effect on productivity. In their review of between-subjects experiments conducted on remote work, Shockley et al. (Reference Shockley, Allen and Grant2024) concluded there was no tendency for those working remotely to show poorer performance outcomes than those not working remotely. A recent meta-analysis showed a small but beneficial relationship between remote work intensity and supervisor-rated performance (Gajendran et al., Reference Gajendran, Ponnapalli, Wang and Javalagi2024). Economic studies similarly show no detriment in productivity. Based on an analysis of the relationship between GDP per hour growth and the ability to work remotely across 43 industries, Fernald et al. (Reference Fernald, Goode, Li and Meisenbacher2024) found industries more adaptable to remote work did not experience a larger or smaller change in productivity growth since 2020 than did less adaptable industries. The authors concluded that remote work neither helped nor hindered productivity growth. Research conducted by the U.S. Department of Labor has found industries with higher rates of remote work report greater increases in productivity. Specifically, across 61 industries, Pabilonia and Redmond (Reference Pabilonia and Redmond2024) reported total productivity growth from 2019 to 2022 was positively associated with the increase in the percentage of remote workers, even after accounting for prepandemic productivity trends.
Research conducted specifically with the federal workforce similarly finds no detriment to performance by virtue of remote work, but the authors also note the difficulty in isolating the impact of remote work alone (U.S. Government Accountability Office, 2024). For example, remote work was associated with an improvement in taxpayer call wait times to the IRS, but the agency noted that additional staffing and technology upgrades also contributed to improvement.
Implications for I-O science and practice
Although telework has long been an option within the federal workforce as well as the public sector, the COVID-19 pandemic made fully remote and hybrid work available at a large scale (Shockley et al., Reference Shockley, Allen and Grant2024). Ongoing research shows a significant number of workers continue to spend some portion of their work week working from home. Specifically, recent estimates indicate work from home accounts for one quarter of paid workdays among Americans aged 20–64 (Buckman et al., Reference Buckman, Barrero, Bloom and Davis2025). Moreover, employees have embraced the benefits of remote work such as reduced time spent commuting (Aksoy et al., Reference Aksoy, Barrero, Bloom, Davis, Dolls and Zarate2023).
The return-to-office order prioritizes traditional, in-person work models that favor ideal worker norms. Ideal worker norms refer to the implicit and explicit expectation that employees should be fully devoted to their work, prioritize work above family and personal needs, and always be available (Acker, Reference Acker1990; Bailyn, Reference Bailyn1993; Reid, Reference Reid2015). Such norms are based on the traditional male breadwinner model. Historically, the ideal worker was a man who left the house each day to work while his wife tended to nonwork matters (Acker, Reference Acker1990; Dumas & Sanchez-Burks, Reference Dumas and Sanchez-Burks2015). The return-to-office reinforces the underlying assumptions of ideal worker norms, which were developed based on the needs of a workforce unburdened by nonwork responsibilities (Zanhour & Sumpter, Reference Zanhour and Sumpter2022). These ideal worker norms spill over into the design of work, prioritizing the expectation of physical presence (i.e., face time) over the completion of the work itself (Reid, Reference Reid2015).
The Trump administration has also issued orders that concern diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). For example, Executive Order 14151, "Ending Radical and Wasteful Government DEI Programs and Preferencing," significantly impacts DEI initiatives within federal agencies and among federal contractors. The return-to-office PM alongside the DEI executive order reinforce one another by restructuring the federal workforce to reflect a more centralized, command-and-control traditionalist model of work (Kurland & Cooper, Reference Kurland and Cooper2002). We now describe implications of the PM for (a) the attraction and retention of workers, and (b) DEI.
Attraction and retention
One major implication of the order is that it will likely result in “brain drain” within the federal workforce. Specifically, we can expect the loss of highly skilled workers and the inability to attract new talent. One explicit intent of the return-to-office order was to incite voluntary terminations (Musk & Ramaswamy, Reference Musk and Ramaswamy2024). On January 27, 2025, President Trump warned that federal workers were required to show up to the office or face termination, stating, “We think a very substantial number of people will not show up to work, and therefore our government will get smaller and more efficient, and that’s what we’ve been looking to do for many, many decades” (Samuels, Reference Samuels2025).
There is clear evidence the order is likely to have the intended result in terms of increased turnover. However, those most likely to leave are the most experienced and skilled members of the federal workforce (Tsipursky, Reference Tsipursky2025). A study conducted by Ma et al. (Reference Ma, Ding and Wahed2024) found that after Biden issued the call for federal employees’ return to office in March 2022, turnover rates of senior and more skilled federal employees increased. Specifically, turnover increased 32% among those with advanced qualifications and specialized abilities, and 26% among senior employees. Across federal agencies, the data consistently showed that those with the most to contribute to the public sector, those with skills in technology, science, and management, were more likely to leave following the return-to-office policy.
Recent Pew Research Center research showed among employed adults who have a job that can be done from home, 46% indicated if their employer rescinded their ability to work from home, they would be unlikely to remain at their job (Parker, Reference Parker2025). In addition, research suggests individuals are willing to take an average 25% less in total compensation for an identical partly or fully remote job over a fully in-person job (Cullen et al., Reference Cullen, Pakzad-Hurson and Perez-Truglia2025). The most highly skilled workers, federal employees who hold a professional degree or doctorate, are already on average paid less in total compensation than their counterparts in the private sector (Congressional Budget Office, 2024). Thus, there is considerable motivation for highly skilled workers forced to return in person full time to seek job opportunities outside the federal workforce.
Remote work overall is an important talent management tool for federal worker attraction and engagement. A report issued by the U.S. Government Accountability Office (2024) showed in addition to being associated with stronger retention, telework expanded the talent pool for government positions due to the ability to hire individuals who live further away from agency locations. Moreover, a study conducted by OPM demonstrated remote job announcements advertised between August 2022 and December 2022 attracted a larger, more qualified, and more diverse applicant pool than did advertisements for nonremote positions (Jaques-Leslie, Reference Jaques-Leslie2024; note a full report on these findings was available on the OPM website (https://www.opm.gov/about-us/reports-publications/agency-reports/brief-on-the-effect-of-the-remote-work-designation-on-hiring/) on March 5, 2025, was removed as of March 22, 2025). Data from the 2022 Federal Employee Viewpoints Survey found telework improved employee engagement and intent to remain at the agency. Indeed, multiple reports based on federal workforce data have concluded that telework has been an effective talent management tool (U.S. Government Accountability Office, 2024; U.S. Office of Personnel Management, 2023; Wagner, Reference Wagner2024).
In conclusion, the PM puts the federal workforce at odds with the private-sector employment market that continues to include hybrid and remote work modes as part of an overall talent management strategy. Thus, government agencies that compete with the private sector for high-skilled positions in technology, law, and engineering are likely to lose the ability to attract and retain highly skilled workers.
Diversity, equity, and inclusion
The return-to-office directive has DEI implications. By providing greater autonomy and flexibility, remote work supports inclusion (Santos et al., Reference Santos, Magalhaes, Santons and Correia-Neto2024). Return-to-office mandates have been viewed as a signal of management mistrust of employees and an attempt to exert control (Ding & Ma, Reference Ding and Ma2024; Jackson, & Chowdhury, Reference Jackson and Chowdhury2023). Moreover, traditionally underrepresented groups express a strong preference for remote work. Thus, the return-to-office policy is likely to disproportionally impact the needs of individuals with disabilities, women and caregivers, persons of color, and LGBTQ+ individuals.
Disabled workers
Remote work supports disability inclusion and has long been a mechanism for expanding work opportunities to individuals with disabilities and chronic health conditions (Allen et al., Reference Allen, Golden and Shockley2015). The increased employment numbers for individuals with disabilities over the past several years have been attributed to the rise in remote work (Gonzales, Reference Gonzales2022; Liu & Quinby, Reference Liu and Quinby2024). For example, working from home enables individuals with environmental sensitivities, mobility impairments, and stamina issues to implement accommodations and eliminates obstacles associated with commuting (de la Roche & Simovic, Reference de la Roche and Simovic2023). Moreover, employees with disabilities were 11% more likely to prefer hybrid work relative to those without disabilities (Dowling et al., Reference Dowling, Goldstein, Park and Price2022).
Women and caregivers
Both men and women desire flexibility. However, for women, working remotely also provides higher levels of psychological safety and less exposure to microaggressions (Field et al., Reference Field, Krivkovich, Yee, Robinson and Kügele2023). Moreover, these issues are heightened for women of color, with disabilities, and who identify as LGBTQ+. In addition, women have noted remote work is beneficial with regard to work–nonwork management (Thompson et al., Reference Thompson, Payne, Alexander, Gaskins and Henning2022). Return-to-office represents a return to masculine workplace defaults. As argued by Acker (Reference Acker1990, Reference Acker2006), workplaces are not gender-neutral spaces but are designed to accommodate ideal workers. Ideal worker norms typically disadvantage women, especially women with caregiving responsibilities due to the perpetuation of rigid expectations that reinforce traditional gender roles (Williams et al., Reference Williams, Blair-Loy and Berdahl2013). For example, remote work enables a working parent with a sick child home from school to manage work and nonwork matters. Prior research shows that motherhood penalties are reduced when features of the job include flexibility (Ishizuka, Reference Ishizuka2021).
Workers of color
Employees of color feel a stronger sense of belonging when working remotely relative to when working in the office due to less exposure to microaggressions (Slack, 2021). In addition, persons of color report a stronger preference for hybrid/full-time remote work than their White counterparts (Subramanian & Gilbert, Reference Subramanian and Gilbert2021) and were 14% more likely than their White counterparts to report that they would leave an organization in which hybrid work was not available (Dowling et al., Reference Dowling, Goldstein, Park and Price2022). Working from home provides individuals with a private and safe space in which they can express their identity with fewer concerns as to how they are perceived by others (Santos et al., Reference Santos, Magalhaes, Santons and Correia-Neto2024).
LGBTQ+ workers
Remote work provides more identity disclosure control and ability to avoid toxic behaviors at work (Santos et al., Reference Santos, Magalhães and Ralph2023). For example, LGBTQ+ software professionals reported that remote or hybrid work reduced situations in which people would stare or otherwise make them feel uncomfortable. Research has also found that LGBTQ+ workers reported feeling significantly less stressed and tired when working from home relative to working in person (Amerikaner et al., Reference Amerikaner, Yan, Sayer, Doan, Fish, Drotning and Rinderknecht2023). In addition, LGBTQ+ employees were 24% more likely to leave an organization without a hybrid work option and 13% more likely to prefer hybrid work than were heterosexual employees (Dowling et al., Reference Dowling, Goldstein, Park and Price2022).
Conclusion
Restructuring the federal workforce to reflect a more centralized, traditionalist employment model that favors ideal worker norms is likely to result in a weakened federal workforce, workforce accessibility concerns, and potential legal violations. Forcing everyone into a rigid, office-based schedule limits local discretion to offer policies that work best for them. These changes have the potential to negatively reshape federal employment for years to come.
Open access
