Agencies credit telework with recruiting, retention gains, GAO finds

Federal telework continues to be in the political crosshairs —especially as the incoming second Trump administration has signaled plans to end it through its proposed Department of Government Efficiency — but a Nov. 22 Government Accountability Office report found that at four agencies, the practice has had an effect on the ability to recruit and provide customer service. 

The report; which examines telework postures at the IRS, Farm Service Agency, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and Veterans Benefits Administration between July 2019 and December 2023; found that the practice impacted the agencies’ ability to recruit and retain talent, regardless of how much they utilized it in their workforces. 

The report, part of a series the watchdog is conducting on federal telework, looked at the telework policies and use at the four agencies, each deemed a High Impact Service Provider by the Office of Management and Budget for their customer-facing services, as well as their implementation of best practices for their respective programs. 

While each agency’s ability to evaluate its own telework program’s effects varied, so did its overall use of the program. For instance, while a February 2024 pay period showed that 49% of IRS employees were considered frequent teleworks, 28% worked in the office, the FSA recorded 81% of its staff working in-office in a March 2024 pay period, with only 3% teleworking for five days or more. 

The differences in telework use often depended on each agency’s work portability — FSA officials often have to be on-site to receive acreage reports and assess farm operations, while IRS customer service representatives can field calls and answer taxpayer questions at any location — or separate collective bargaining agreements, but within agencies, telework use could vary from office to office in some cases. 

But what commonality the four agencies did share was the impact telework, even as an option, had on their ability to recruit, hire and retain employees. 

“FSA officials at state and county offices told us the agency’s relative lack of telework use following reentry compared to the private sector or other federal agencies likely posed a challenge to recruitment, hiring and retention,” the report said about the Agriculture Department component. “FSA officials at one county office said that they have had applicants take themselves out of consideration after learning that the position required them to be in the office most of the time.”

IRS officials noted that telework was “an important tool in helping the agency hire over 5,000 new CSRs in fiscal year 2023” and expanded the talent pool from which the agency could hire. Conversely, officials noted that some in-person requirements, such as a 12-week training period for CSRs, led to higher attrition, with one IRS location reporting that 30% of new staff quit during the training period. 

At the USCIS — where 39% worked in-person, 38% worked remotely and 15% teleworked five days or more in a February 2024 pay period — telework-eligible positions drew more applicants than in-person positions between 2019 and 2023. 

Applicants for remote positions, where an employee operates from an alternate worksite and isn’t expected to come to the office, drew three times as much interest as telework-eligible or in-person positions in 2023, USCIS officials told GAO.

An agency analysis of its 2023 Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey data “found that frequent teleworkers scored higher on performance dimensions of accountability and customer responsiveness than employees who teleworked less frequently or not at all.”

The VBA, which saw 66% of its employees telework five or more days in a February 2024 pay period, said that telework as an option “likely contributed to engagement and retention improvements” and has received more applicant interest for telework-eligible positions.

“Our analysis of [VA All Employee Survey] data found that in 2023, more employees intended to leave VBA for work-life balance reasons, including greater telework flexibility (around 5 percent of total respondents) than in 2019 (around 3 percent),” the report said. 

Where agencies did see customer service or performance changes, the report said officials did not attribute it to telework, but other anomalies, such as delays for the VBA caused by the closure of federal records centers during the pandemic or improvements in IRS customer service aided by technology modernization and additional hiring. 

The GAO did note that all four agencies still had work to do to complete best practices designed to successfully implement their telework programs. The IRS, FSA and USCIS have not yet fully evaluated the effects of their telework use, while the VBA has partially completed efforts to collect telework data.

The report comes as the Trump administration has proposed to use its non-government panel, known as DOGE, to use telework reductions as a tool to help draw large-scale layoffs to slice the federal workforce.

The GAO recommended that the IRS, FSA and USCIS evaluate their telework programs to identify problems or issues and make appropriate adjustments, while the VBA should complete its telework system update to collect more data on its use. 

VA and Homeland Security officials agreed with the recommendations, while the IRS partially agreed and the USDA did not agree or disagree.