Ride the Lightning

Working From Home Will Continue Until Summer of 2021 in D.C. Area

September 15, 2020

The Washington Post reported on September 14 that a study led by the Greater Washington Partnership surveyed more than 400 employers in the District, Maryland and Virginia and resulted in a finding that the majority of workers in the D.C. area may not return to their offices before next summer.

Companies that had planned to bring workers back to the office after Labor Day have revised their plans in light of new outbreaks, the predicted course of the pandemic and employee fears. Also, they have seen major companies across the nation say that their employees will be working from home through 2020 – some of them saying working from home will continue until next summer – or indefinitely.

The survey shows that some larger employers are being cautious in their decisions, partly because of uncertainty about the availability of public transit and other commuting challenges for their employees.

"We are now post-Labor Day, and the dates have all shifted back to January or later," said Joe McAndrew, director of transportation policy at the Greater Washington Partnership, an alliance of chief executives of the region's top employers. "The level of uncertainty was real [at the onset of the pandemic], and I think it's still very real now."

430 employers representing about 275,000 workers in the greater Washington region participated in the August survey. A clear majority of them said they are adopting a phased approach to returning to the office, although many said they remain uncertain about timing. A third of the employers said they don't know whether they will have their workers back on site by next summer.

In addition to reliable transportation, employers said a regionwide coronavirus testing strategy "that is timely, accessible, and affordable" is needed to safely reopen. Even as most employers said they want to test their employees for the virus, they do not intend to do so if testing costs more than $50 per employee. Only one in 10 employers surveyed said they plan to require employees be tested before returning to the office or worksite.

Smaller companies with fewer than 25 employees are more likely to resume normal on-site operations sooner. Those companies reported that about 45 percent of their workforce would be back on site this fall, much higher than companies with more than 1,000 workers, which expect to have fewer than 25 percent of their employees back in the office before the end of the year.

More than half of employers are talking about staggered days in the office and altering work hours.

This is consistent with what we have seen with law firms. Partial openings seem more the rule than the exception – and some law firms are not particularly interested in opening until it feels safe. What many firms have learned is that they can in fact work from home, with only very limited staff in the office. Technology to enable secure working from home is now in place. A lot of employers are letting those who want to work at the office go in, but most lawyers are choosing to work from home. Decisions about what to do in the future are all over the map in law firms – and constantly evolving in light of pandemic development.

As recent predictions from the scientists seem to indicate that we are nowhere close to the end of the pandemic, time frames for reopening are certainly shifting forward.

Sharon D. Nelson, Esq., President, Sensei Enterprises, Inc.
3975 University Drive, Suite 225|Fairfax, VA 22030
Email: Phone: 703-359-0700
Digital Forensics/Cybersecurity/Information Technology
https://senseient.com
https://twitter.com/sharonnelsonesq
https://www.linkedin.com/in/sharondnelson
https://amazon.com/author/sharonnelson