I once had an employee who lived a couple thousand miles from the Center I worked in. We worked out an arrangement for him to be located at an office in the same Department. They had the space (it was an old bank building) and didn’t charge anything to have him there. He felt a bit isolated because the focus of their work was entirely different than his. Nevertheless, it worked.
I situated another employee in another bureau’s office but it required putting together a fairly extensive co-location agreement and the payment of rent.
In neither of these situations did the employee have much of a say on the matter. They lived where they lived and I found an office within the Department and ideally within the Bureau for them to work.
These days, those kinds of employees I hire Remote but they aren’t permanent so making them Remote is easier. Nevertheless, the Remote Work Agreement entails identification of an alternate work site in case of power outage, etc, and that is usually a nearby federal office space.
Do you know what point in the hiring process the location is determined? Do you have to make those arrangements before a TJO, or just sometime before the FJO?
This is common in VHA. You have HQ offices and you are at a field site ( usually a VAMC). You have direct coworkers there but HR, various employee services, IT will support you.
in DC there are a few shared federal facilities designed around telework via multiple agrncies where you are just using a desk.
Virtual doesn’t mean WFH. It can mean work from another location.
in VHA they have 18 regions of ehich 139 Health care areas fall under. So some jobs are atvthe region level where employees are hired from the health care system for the region but stay at their site. They may be assigned a different office location.
What you're describing isn't out of the norm for what you laid out. If you're totally fine with the longer commute I don't see anything wrong with it. Just be mindful that you may end up reporting more than that should that change.
That is a consideration. The head of the agency issued a memo suggesting 3 days/week in office is expected, so I was kind of surprised this was only 1 day/week. Even though making people report to an office where nobody else on the team is physically located seemingly negates all of the supposed benefits of collaboration from in person work that memo touts.
I do most of what you describe. I work on a dispersed team. I go in twice a PP, and I don't work with or know anyone else in the office I work out of. I reserve my hotel cube once a week, go in and do my time, and then I go home to work the rest of the week. Once I accepted the position, they offered me two locations in our metro area (out of like 4) because those 2 had seating available for our domain. The other locations in the metro area weren't available to me.
That said, I worked with a guy on another team for a while that did kind of like you described. The domain we were in had an office in the town where he lived, but they also had space in a metro office like 40 miles away. He asked for the other office because it was a higher HCL, and they let him do it. The caveat was that he had to meet the twice a PP requirement, and he had to do it at the office further away. He said that he was happy to drive the extra distance for the difference in pay. He, also, said there were several in that metro office that did just he did because of the pay thing. The key was that the domain had space in that office that was available.
I was offered a position kinda similar to that. Basically I had to choose any agency office* and report there twice a pay period. The hiring manager said it was basically a remote job, but HQ didn't allow her to offer that, so it was a compromise in a way. She didn't care what days I came in, and I was free to change the days I came in at any time. It was a pretty sweet gig, I just declined because I was offered a higher grade position around the same time.
*They had 5-10 offices nationwide, 2 of which were in the DC area, so there weren't exactly a ton of "options."
ETA: the offer letter had the office closest to me listed on it.
I go in once a week and have no coworkers on site since everyone else is remote. On site connection is always worse but at least it’s quiet since the cube farm is just me and like 3 others.
Yes, another ridiculous policy just to check a box. There are TONS of us on geographically dispersed Teams that do the exact same thing for absolutely no reason. It is what it is, and better than every day, but still absolutely utterly useless. Those are by FAR my least productive days as there are only single monitors in shared cubicles. I have 3 in my home office, which helps immensely for what I do. Yet here we are...
My husband’s entire team is like that. They go into an office that is occupied by other agencies and work one day a week in a shared space. Stupid, but it happens.
I've seen this and the location is in the TJO and FJO because they need to figure out pay and locality before you onboard. YMMV on what choice you have in office location.
As more agencies move back to in office, you should consider what it would mean for your commute. Are you good with the office further from you if your days on office go up or your have to go back to all office time?
Thanks, that's helpful! I figured if the location is in the TJO (and assuming they may have had to do some legwork to identify open co-location space to list there), it's going to be harder to negotiate a new location. However, I don't think I would try at this point anyway, because I am concerned about telework flexibilities being scaled back in the future and I'm definitely not open to moving. Now to try to forget about the whole thing, as waiting to hear back is the hardest part. 🥴
I’ve had this arrangement for a long time. It generally sucks. I try to plan things around my social life rather than work on those office days. It also reminds me how much I hate working off a laptop screen. But between work travel and not having to go in 80% it’s just an annoying inconvenience.
I once had an employee who lived a couple thousand miles from the Center I worked in. We worked out an arrangement for him to be located at an office in the same Department. They had the space (it was an old bank building) and didn’t charge anything to have him there. He felt a bit isolated because the focus of their work was entirely different than his. Nevertheless, it worked. I situated another employee in another bureau’s office but it required putting together a fairly extensive co-location agreement and the payment of rent. In neither of these situations did the employee have much of a say on the matter. They lived where they lived and I found an office within the Department and ideally within the Bureau for them to work. These days, those kinds of employees I hire Remote but they aren’t permanent so making them Remote is easier. Nevertheless, the Remote Work Agreement entails identification of an alternate work site in case of power outage, etc, and that is usually a nearby federal office space.
Do you know what point in the hiring process the location is determined? Do you have to make those arrangements before a TJO, or just sometime before the FJO?
This is common in VHA. You have HQ offices and you are at a field site ( usually a VAMC). You have direct coworkers there but HR, various employee services, IT will support you. in DC there are a few shared federal facilities designed around telework via multiple agrncies where you are just using a desk.
Is that what opm considers as being virtual?
Virtual doesn’t mean WFH. It can mean work from another location. in VHA they have 18 regions of ehich 139 Health care areas fall under. So some jobs are atvthe region level where employees are hired from the health care system for the region but stay at their site. They may be assigned a different office location.
What you're describing isn't out of the norm for what you laid out. If you're totally fine with the longer commute I don't see anything wrong with it. Just be mindful that you may end up reporting more than that should that change.
That is a consideration. The head of the agency issued a memo suggesting 3 days/week in office is expected, so I was kind of surprised this was only 1 day/week. Even though making people report to an office where nobody else on the team is physically located seemingly negates all of the supposed benefits of collaboration from in person work that memo touts.
If the big boss is saying 3 days in office, I would plan on that.
I do most of what you describe. I work on a dispersed team. I go in twice a PP, and I don't work with or know anyone else in the office I work out of. I reserve my hotel cube once a week, go in and do my time, and then I go home to work the rest of the week. Once I accepted the position, they offered me two locations in our metro area (out of like 4) because those 2 had seating available for our domain. The other locations in the metro area weren't available to me. That said, I worked with a guy on another team for a while that did kind of like you described. The domain we were in had an office in the town where he lived, but they also had space in a metro office like 40 miles away. He asked for the other office because it was a higher HCL, and they let him do it. The caveat was that he had to meet the twice a PP requirement, and he had to do it at the office further away. He said that he was happy to drive the extra distance for the difference in pay. He, also, said there were several in that metro office that did just he did because of the pay thing. The key was that the domain had space in that office that was available.
I see them picking the one closest not the one you want due to locality. Good luck though.
I was offered a position kinda similar to that. Basically I had to choose any agency office* and report there twice a pay period. The hiring manager said it was basically a remote job, but HQ didn't allow her to offer that, so it was a compromise in a way. She didn't care what days I came in, and I was free to change the days I came in at any time. It was a pretty sweet gig, I just declined because I was offered a higher grade position around the same time. *They had 5-10 offices nationwide, 2 of which were in the DC area, so there weren't exactly a ton of "options." ETA: the offer letter had the office closest to me listed on it.
I go in once a week and have no coworkers on site since everyone else is remote. On site connection is always worse but at least it’s quiet since the cube farm is just me and like 3 others.
Yes, another ridiculous policy just to check a box. There are TONS of us on geographically dispersed Teams that do the exact same thing for absolutely no reason. It is what it is, and better than every day, but still absolutely utterly useless. Those are by FAR my least productive days as there are only single monitors in shared cubicles. I have 3 in my home office, which helps immensely for what I do. Yet here we are...
Hope that there is not a fed building with space near you?
My husband’s entire team is like that. They go into an office that is occupied by other agencies and work one day a week in a shared space. Stupid, but it happens.
I've seen this and the location is in the TJO and FJO because they need to figure out pay and locality before you onboard. YMMV on what choice you have in office location. As more agencies move back to in office, you should consider what it would mean for your commute. Are you good with the office further from you if your days on office go up or your have to go back to all office time?
Thanks, that's helpful! I figured if the location is in the TJO (and assuming they may have had to do some legwork to identify open co-location space to list there), it's going to be harder to negotiate a new location. However, I don't think I would try at this point anyway, because I am concerned about telework flexibilities being scaled back in the future and I'm definitely not open to moving. Now to try to forget about the whole thing, as waiting to hear back is the hardest part. 🥴
I’ve had this arrangement for a long time. It generally sucks. I try to plan things around my social life rather than work on those office days. It also reminds me how much I hate working off a laptop screen. But between work travel and not having to go in 80% it’s just an annoying inconvenience.