“For those DC folks that have jobs that lend themselves well to remote work, has your office said how long you can expect to work from home until?”

Photo by Ted Eytan

“Dear PoPville,

For those who started working from home in DC because of the pandemic, I was wondering if folks could share what their offices have said/not said about how long employees can expect to work from home. For example, I know people who work for various types of organizations (big law firms, medium-sized and small-sized nonprofits, large for-profits) who have been told they should expect to work from home until at least January 2021. Meanwhile, my office has allowed employees to work from home since mid-March and has announced continuation of this work-from-home policy with advance notice anywhere from a 2-week to 2-month basis (so, for example, my work announced in early August that we can expect to work from home till at least mid-September, and we’ll probably get another update in early September about whether and how long this policy will be extended again). I was wondering what other organizations in DC have been doing.

Background/caveats/etc:

These are obviously stressful times with the COVID pandemic, among other things. I work for a medium/small nonprofit in DC, and am very grateful to have a job that can be done remotely. And I understand that this is an unprecedented situation, and we are all playing things by ear to some extent. However, it has been pretty stressful wondering if we may need to go back soon. My organization’s work lends itself quite readily to remote work (we’ve been told that productivity has gone up), and I will say that I spent at least 90% of my pre-COVID time in front of a computer or on conference calls anyway. Like a lot of my coworkers, I relied on public transportation when I did commute into the office. I’m concerned about going back to the office in the fall (especially with flu season approaching) before a vaccine is ready (it just feels like an unnecessary risk). I get the sense that middle-management is itching to go back to get face time with the higher-ups.

TLDR: For those DC folks that have jobs that lend themselves well to remote work, has your office said how long you can expect to work from home until? Do you work for government, nonprofit, for-profit? What size is your organization?”