The Downside of Federal Workers Forced Back Into the Office

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It is hard to imagine now, but the pandemic was only four years ago. We were all forced out of public life, and into our homes, by a deadly virus. Many of us lost loved ones. Schools were closed, and many jobs became remote.

Before Covid, very few employees worked from their homes for pay but by mid-2021, one in five Americans worked from home using computers (also known as telework) at least some of the time. But in some fields, the rates were much higher. In professional and business services, a third worked at home all the time and nearly half at least some of the time. Even in education a third worked from home some of the time. Those working in computer or information services were, of course, most likely to do so with a whopping two-thirds reporting working from home at least part of the time. These changes have been revolutionary as one in five Americans still work remotely today. And nearly half of those with an advanced degree do so.

While this shift was initially made to save lives, there was an added—if perhaps unexpected—advantage for parents. In a pre-pandemic world, parents, whether married or single, were working in jobs that had been designed for breadwinners who had domestic partners—usually a wife. The entire industrial system was organized around the notion of the home as a “haven in a heartless world” where men fought their way through a dirty, competitive industrial system, and women salved their wounds and cared for their families. Now poor women, including many immigrants and non-white women, never had that luxury: They often worked from home being paid by the piece for garments washed or sewed, or worked in other women’s homes as domestics. The organization of industrial capitalism required long uninterrupted hours of work, which were incompatible with caring for children, the sick, or elderly relatives.

When industrial workplaces were being developed, the solution to such incompatibility between family and labor was to develop an ideology of separate spheres. The workplace became male, and the family sphere the work of women. Before this, while men and women often had different tasks, everyone worked in their family space—and children were included in that labor by the time they were old enough to hold on to their parents, shirtsleeves.

What happened post-WWII was that women, even mothers with young children and aging parents, entered the paid workforce. By the end of the 20th century most mothers worked for pay, and most couples had two breadwinners. But the working conditions did not change. We continued to have a labor force based on an ideology of separate spheres, except that women now lived in both of them simultaneously. The work most women did after their day of paid work outside the home was labeled the “second shift."

Over time, that second shift began to be shared, somewhat, with male partners. Each generation of fathers has shared child care, and even housework, more equally then the last. But overall statistics show that, on average, women still do more of the family work than their husbands. And yet, about a third of fathers take parental leave, and many men at least claim to do an equal share of parenting. So change has happened, but not for everyone. Still, whether mothers alone, or parents together, did the family labor, it was still incompatible with inflexible onsite paid work.

And then came Covid. What we learned from the stay-at-home orders was that parents with caretaking responsibilities found their lives easier to juggle. Working from home, or engaging in hybrid work with flexible schedules, allows adults who work in both spheres to manage their lives with less stress. But what about their employers: Are they happier? Research suggests that employers want their people back in the office. There is some evidence that fully remote work decreases productivity, but not that hybrid work, or workplace flexibility, has the same effect. At the same time, we also learned that employees are happier and under less stress and can manage both paid and family work more effectively. In research by myself and my colleagues, we found that more than half of the couples we interviewed reported benefits to their relationships as well, because they had more time to be together.

Workplace flexibility, in both time and place, should be the wave of the future, if we hope that both women and men will continue to be economic workers and parents. Unfortunately, our current United State executive branch leadership doesn’t seem to understand that the world no longer consists of men in the labor force with women at home to manage the family sphere. They don’t seem to understand that forcing all federal workers back into their offices full time makes life far more difficult for parents—especially for single mothers, but for any parent who care for young children. Banning workplace flexibility also hurts any employee who helps care for an elderly parent. Could this be a not very subtle way of trying to push caregivers out of the labor force?

If the goal of research is to help provide evidence for the best way toward progress, a better world for us all, then we should heed the evidence: Workplace flexibility is good for families and does not hurt productivity. Fully remote work may need to be restricted because of productivity concerns, but not flexible conditions. Working families need as much workplace flexibility as their jobs allow, both time flexibility and place. And our government should lead the way.