As most of the country looks to bring workers back to the office federal agencies are also slowly working on plans to bring back employees as well, but no specific plans are due for federal agencies until July 19, 2021 so we do not yet know how and when Social Security employees will return to field offices.
In 2013 Social Security started a telework pilot program that allowed some of its employees to party work from home. Considering most Social Security employees have been strictly working from home for the last 14 months due to the COVID-19 pandemic, it begs the question as to whether the agency will continue to allow some of its staff to work from home on a part-time basis. Shortly after taking over as the new commissioner for Social Security Andrew Saul ended the telework program to the objection of many Social Security employees. There is some speculation the telework pilot program may make a return even after a plan is in place to bring employees back to federal offices, so it might be valuable to take a look at how successful the telework pilot program was.
In July of 2017 a report of the program’s finding were sent to members of Congress. Below is that report.
Findings
SSA did not restrict specific FO and TSC job positions from participating in its telework pilot. However, SSA limited the number of FOs, TSCs, and employees that could participate in the pilot. When SSA began the FO telework pilot in December 2013, it restricted telework to 1 day per 2-week pay period. SSA subsequently increased FO telework to 1 day a week. The TSC telework pilot began in September 2015, and employees were eligible to telework 1 day a week. For hearing offices, SSA restricted only the contact representative position from participating in telework. Hearing office staff could telework up to 3 days per week; some decision writers could telework 4 days a week; and ALJs could telework up to 8 days per month, with the expectation of scheduling, on average, 50 hearings per month. Generally, FO, TSC, and hearing office staff could perform most of their duties while teleworking.
As of January 2017,
- 4,526 (16 percent) of the 27,530 FO employees were participating in the telework pilot at 317 (26 percent) of the 1,213 FOs;
- 831 (19 percent) of the 4,298 TSC employees were teleworking at 17 (68 percent) of the 25 TSCs; and
- 5,541 (64 percent) of the 8,725 hearing office employees were teleworking across all 164 hearing offices, National Case Assistance Centers, and National Hearing Centers.
SSA’s management information showed that teleworking FOs performed slightly less as well as the non-teleworking FOs while TSC teleworking staff performed slightly better than non-teleworking staff. Finally, as the number of hearing office teleworkers increased, hearing office productivity declined in three of the four metrics ODAR monitored. SSA explained that multiple factors affect productivity, regardless of telework.
SSA managers and staff recognized various telework challenges, and SSA told us it was working to resolve them. SSA needs to establish a business plan that monitors telework productivity to ensure it will timely identify and correct trends that may negatively affect customer service.
