Many federal workers are struggling to grasp how they’ll comply with President Donald Trump’s executive order requiring them to return to in-person work when they don’t have any designated office space. 

Several agencies eliminated office space at the peak of the pandemic with personnel moving to work remotely or to a hybrid model. Others were hired as fully remote workers and have never been required to work in-person and even after receiving notice that they will be required to return to the office, have not been given any guidance about where exactly they will be working.

“For all I know I may be working from a row boat on the Anacostia River,” said one federal employee who works for an agency under the Department of Health and Human Services and has been working from home since the pandemic after the regional office was shuttered in 2020.

“We had a meeting through [Microsoft] Teams, and nothing was written. It was just kind of informal, just saying that managers had to come back Feb. 24 and then staff within a 50-mile radius needed to come back March 17, but there’s been no information about where exactly we are supposed to go,” added the employee, granted anonymity to speak candidly.

The in-person work requirement was outlined in Trump’s inauguration day executive order stating that “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.”

The order was further explained in a subsequent memo from the White House’s Office of Personnel Management days later directing agencies to comply within about 30 days.

Lingering logistics questions remain over back-to-work order

Many of HHS’s more than 80,000 employees, several of whom spoke with the Washington Examiner on the condition of anonymity, are trying to figure out the back-to-work order.

An employee at the National Institutes of Health who lives in Washington, D.C., said he was hired as a remote worker and said no one on his team knows what the future will look like.

“I guess I would have to go on campus, but they got rid of the office space my team used to work in, so we really don’t know. Our boss said they really don’t know what’s going to happen,” the person said. 

A separate employee at the Food and Drug Administration said he is a hybrid worker and goes into the headquarters in Silver Spring, Maryland, once a week and questions if there will be enough space to accommodate all of the employees back at the office.

“There’s not enough parking to bring everyone back at once. There’s not enough parking and the office spaces are cramped. There’s just no way this is possible,” the person said.

Capacity issues at the White Oak campus in Maryland, about 40 minutes north of Washington, D.C., have been noted for years. A 2018 report for the consolidation of the headquarters noted the agency needed “7,436 additional parking spaces,” which amounts to one parking space for every 1.8 employees. 

The report specifically states “the lack of direct access to high-capacity transit, such as Metrorail, presents a challenge for FDA. FDA must employ a variety of strategies that go above and beyond teleworking, shuttles, and carpools/vanpools.”

Another employee at the FDA who also goes in once a week described a nightmare commuting situation in which he’s forced to take the metro and a shuttle to get to the headquarters. 

“It’s probably two to three hours. Some days it’s probably closer to two hours if I make all my connections perfectly, if I don’t, it could be three hours or more per day,” the person said. “Every day I commute, it saps my energy during the day and makes me less able to focus at work or to have a life outside of it.”

A report from the Government Accountability Office in 2016 found the campus was not up to standard and the agency’s plans to address cramped offices and parking spaces need more detail before they’re put into action.

The anxiety and uncertainty appear to be taking hold in other federal agencies. Tucker Bingham, who works for the National Labor Relations Board, says they received the return to office directive, but it hasn’t been implemented yet.

“We’re just waiting anxiously to see what comes down the pipeline,” Bingham said at a rally organized by the American Federation of Government Employees outside the Capitol earlier in the week. ”Our office footprints have been reduced because telework has been implemented for such a long period of time that if everyone were to come back to the office tomorrow, there would not be enough desks for everyone to sit at.”

The cramped concerns may also be short-lived as the return to work order coincides with a massive effort to reduce the size of the federal workforce, the largest employer in the nation. Trump and billionaire Elon Musk, who heads the Department of Government Efficiency, have prioritized cutting government waste, which has translated into eliminating scores of jobs through resignations and looming layoffs by Sept. 30, the end of the fiscal year.

Still, for those ordered to immediately return to the office, concerns exist about whether the buildings are ready or even fit to work. The problems extend beyond the Washington, D.C., Maryland, and Virginia region which has the highest concentration of federal workers.

In New York City, the Jacob K. Javits Federal Building is the tallest federal office space in the United States at 41 stories. But it also has an asbestos problem, with a 2024 government report calling for “immediate management attention” to protect occupants “from possible health and safety risks arising from asbestos-containing materials.”

As a result, some federal workers can’t safely come back to work in Manhattan because of ongoing asbestos abatement in certain parts of the skyscraper.

Federal buildings chief eyes 50% space reduction

The in-office order comes as the General Services Administration announced plans to significantly reduce the federal government’s real estate footprint, which could further increase the problem. Michael Peters, who serves as the commissioner of the Public Buildings Service told a recent meeting of the Public Buildings Reform Board that the administration is looking to “downsize the portfolio” by as much as 50% in the area.

When asked specifically about how agencies will accommodate all their workers returning to the office in person, Peters acknowledged there is a “potential problem.”

“That’s the $64,000 question these days, right? It’s how many people are coming back and when are they coming back. So a comprehensive assessment is underway, not just here in the district but really across the nation, to understand where we have deficiencies and ascertain how to address them,” Peters said. “We don’t have a firm kind of guidance at this point in time, but we recognize that there is a potential problem.”

Officials at the GSA did not specifically respond to a request for comment on how agencies will handle workers returning to the office, but said the agency is “leading the way to reduce government spend[ing] and close the deficit in service of the American taxpayer.”

“Optimizing GSA’s real estate portfolio prioritizes reducing our deferred maintenance liabilities, supporting the return to office of federal employees, and taking advantage of a stronger private/government partnership in managing the workforce of the future,” the agency said in a statement provided to the Washington Examiner.

Conflicting reports over the status of telework inside the Federal government

Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA), chairwoman of the Senate DOGE Caucus, released a report last December stating that only 6% of federal workers were in the office full-time. The report, titled “Out of Office: Bureaucrats on the Beach and in Bubble Baths but not in Office Buildings,” found not a single federal agency headquarters was found to be half-full, with an average occupancy at just 12%. The report also found that 23%-68% of those teleworking received “incorrect locality pay,” with some living more than 2,000 miles from their office.

“Federal buildings have resembled a ghost town for the last four years,” Ernst said in a statement provided to the Washington Examiner. “You are more likely to spot the Loch Ness Monster or Sasquatch than a crowded government office building.”

“Thankfully, President Trump has ordered the out-of-office bureaucrats back to work. If any federal employee has trouble finding a desk, I will personally come down and help them find space,” she added.

Some of Ernst’s statistics contradict a 2024 OMB report that has since been removed from the OMB website that found 54% of the federal government’s 2.28 million employees work fully on-site. A separate memo from the Office of Personnel Management issued in December 2024 found in fiscal 2023, 43% of all federal employees participated in “routine or situational” telework, down from 46% the year prior. 

“This participation level (43%) marks the lowest percentage since fiscal year 2019 and aids in understanding how agencies are approaching telework utilization going forward,” the report said.

The report found telework helped agencies save money:

“As in previous years, transit and commuting costs are top categories associated with telework-driven cost savings. However, agencies are also reporting significant increases in cost savings in human capital (recruitment, retention, reduced turnover etc.) and rent and office space as a benefit of increased telework.”

The push to require federal employees to return to the office five days a week comes as a federal judge ruled in Trump’s favor on Wednesday by reinstating his “Fork in the Road” deferred resignation offer, allowing federal employees the option to resign from their positions with full benefits and pay until September. 

Roughly 75,000 federal workers took the resignation offer, which represents less than 4% of the more than 2 million federal workers currently employed. Falling short of the 5%-10% estimate White House officials were anticipating, the Trump administration is now ordering agencies to start laying off probationary employees with the least experience.

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Some federal workers are making the case that the looming purge at agencies, in addition to the in-office work requirements, won’t increase productivity or cut back on costs.

“I have no idea how they’re gonna reduce our workforce, when, in fact, our department isn’t even fully staffed,” said the employee who works at an agency under HHS. “Their cost cutting is going to cost more in the long run.”

Marisa Schultz contributed to this report.