Under the guise of work optimization, the current president signed an executive order for the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to “reform the federal workplace to better serve Americans.” In addition to cutting jobs forthright, President Trump is eradicating remote work for federal workers as a passive strategy to reduce the federal workforce, and thereby, government spending. However, ending remote work will likely cost the government more, not less.
Many companies talk about remote work as bad in absolute terms. However, there is evidence that remote work can increase job satisfaction, retention, and productivity. Even amidst unprecedented adversity, productivity increased among remote workers during the pandemic across 61 industries. Remote work can improve employee health and well-being and thereby reduce costs of employee sickness. To be sure, there is some mixed evidence about the benefits of remote work. A reason for this variability is that the success of remote work depends on many factors, including the nature of the job. Nevertheless, the return-on-investment of remote work for businesses can be high.
Yet, resistance to remote work endures. Remote work challenges deeply entrenched beliefs about the way work “should be done.” Proponents of remote work battle a powerful myth that quality work can be done only at the workplace. Opponents of remote work argue that face time predicts success; therefore, the ideal worker is one who spends long hours physically onsite, available at a moment’s notice, and fully committed to work. The underlying assumption is that remote workers are not committed to their jobs, that they are using remote work as an opportunity to slip under the radar to prioritize other things while earning a paycheck.
This assumption that remote workers are uncommitted and unproductive is, by and large, just that—an assumption, not fact.
There is evidence that remote work “works,” however. Here are two specific examples. The first example is Cali Ressler and Jody Thompson’s successful Results-Only Work Environment (ROWE), an intervention that prioritizes people over policies and productivity over presenteeism. Ressler and Thompson implemented ROWE in Best Buy offices, which transformed workplace culture and processes by focusing on whether quality work gets done rather than when and where the work is done. What did they find? Compared to employees who continued with “business as usual,” fewer employees in the ROWE intervention did poor quality work and more had greater job satisfaction and commitment to the organization.
The second example is a workplace culture intervention called STAR (for Support. Transform. Achieve. Results.). I was an investigator of the Work, Family, & Health Networkwhich developed an intervention that increased employees’ schedule control over when and where they work. As Erin Kelly, PhD and Phyllis Moen, PhD described in their 2020 book, Overload: How good jobs went bad and what we can do about it, the intervention significantly benefited both employees (health, well-being, ability to manage work and family roles) and employers (higher job satisfaction and lower turnover among employees). A key component of its success was training supervisors to be more supportive and trusting of employees.
These two specific examples demonstrate what happens when employers and supervisors embrace, rather than resist, diverse ways of working and new priorities—from presenteeism to productivity and from dated policies to people.
The objective of the Executive Order is to optimize the federal workforce to better serve Americans. In reality, it will be a disservice to federal workers, government efficiency, and people living in the US. In the end, rescinding remote work will likely cost the government more than if it embraces remote work—it more ways than just money.