Agencies can do more to strengthen programs for the nearly half a million federal employees known to be teleworking as of a fiscal 2015 report sent to Congress by the Office of Personnel Management.
A recent study by the Government Accountability Office — released March 20 — looks at the departments of Education and Labor, the General Services Administration, and the Securities and Exchange Commission to gauge their compliance and challenges under the “Telework Enhancement Act of 2010.”
The GAO found that the agencies met reporting requirements for telework eligibility and agreements; however, a lack of managerial training, periodic review of telework policies, documentation issues and managerial resistance to telework in select case studies may undermine employee and organizational performance.
Education, Labor and the SEC “did not have a mechanism to help ensure managers have completed this training before approving employee telework agreements,” GAO found, and only GSA required employees to complete online telework agreement training, an Enhancement Act requirement.
Meanwhile, Labor, GSA and SEC did not have controls for regular agreement review (a process still done by paper within Labor), GAO found. These facts led GAO to conclude that “these agencies cannot be assured that the agreements reflect and support their current business needs.”
Focus groups held by GAO found examples of various inconsistencies in the way managers implemented and approved telework schedules and requests, creating barriers, though converse examples highlighted positive ways employees were educated on telework policies and allowed flexibility.
Looking at technologies that could help each agency support remote work programs, GAO issued agency-specific recommendations on ways to improve comprehensive, timely telework training and data assessments. In addition, GAO made recommendations to OPM about tools that could benefit telework governmentwide; however, OPM disagreed with the recommendations, citing limited resources to expend on analysis efforts not required by the Enhancement Act.
The complete report, with specific agency case studies, can be found on GAO.gov.
