Whether in government or the private sector, "Return to Office" orders are very much in vogue these days. The message to workers is to stop watching reality shows and come back to real work and productivity.
The reality is quite different. I started my company in 2005 as a telework company. We use a number of tools to track productivity, from total hours worked, to direct chargeable labor, to hours spent per task. Then we look at the metrics on the actual products created each month for our clients by type and by time spent.
I can tell you a few things we have learned after 20 years. Telework employees are not less productive. In fact, our telework staff are able to be more productive than those onsite for three basic reasons: no commute, fewer meetings, and they never leave their office.
The lack of a commute is a primary benefit in the minds of many workers. It saves them non-working time and money. In congested metro areas, this can mean hours and stress removed. There is no tardiness due to traffic, period.
Fewer meetings as a benefit is less of a productivity boost than it was pre-pandemic. Online collaboration tools like Teams, Zoom and Meet have all made video meetings easy and teleworkers often now have just as many meetings as their onsite colleagues in many cases.
The final element – always being near the office – can become a problem. I have worked from a home office since I started my firm and it can be hard to know when to "go home." It's not healthy over the long term. It's one of the reasons I resisted getting a smartphone at first – do I need to be able to send email from everywhere? (Yes. Yes I do.)
There are absolutely some jobs that require an onsite presence, and in many cases a hybrid approach is a solid one. I have been interested to hear first-person accounts of the unilateral "Return to Office" orders.
On the government side, there have been challenges as the current workforce does not match the existing current facilities. Parking, desks, HVAC are all insufficient in many cases. Also, in the Federal sector, the administration's push to reduce the government's real estate portfolio and freeze on credit card purchases makes finding additional space and furniture close to impossible.
In the private sector, firms across the country offloaded their office space. The are not in a hurry to take on that recurring cost again. So returning employees are crowded into insufficient space or even "hot desking" where they simply sign up to occupy a desk for a few hours a day.
Certainly, you get more work out of someone who doesn't have to fight for parking, or take three buses to get to a crowded office and wait for a desk?
It is embarrassingly easy to see who is at work in a virtual office model. Someone is logged in and doesn't respond to your messages? Start a video call. They don't respond? Document it and notify their supervisor. Non-responsive can easily equal unauthorized absence in this environment.
There is no need to make a workforce miserable for the illusion of physical accountability. In most cases for office employees, accountability will come from their work product and contribution to the bottom line.
Merritt Hamilton Allen is a PR executive and former Navy officer. She appeared regularly as a panelist on NM PBS and is a frequent guest on News Radio KKOB. A Republican for 36 years, she became an independent upon reading the 2024 Republican platform. She lives amicably with her Democratic husband north of I-40 where they run one head of dog, and one of cat. She can be reached at
