Poster #139 - Post-pandemic Telework, Individual Sensemaking and Employee Turnover in the U.S. Federal Workforce

• In Event: Saturday Poster Luncheon

Abstract

Post-pandemic telework has become a normalized mode of organizing work in public agencies, but its implications for workforce stability remain unsettled. This study examines how telework relates to employee turnover in the U.S. federal workforce, with particular attention to employee sensemaking. Using Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey (FEVS) and FedScope data from 2021 to 2024, we distinguish between net individual telework intensity, which captures an employee’s telework exposure relative to agency-year peers, and organizational telework intensity, which captures the broader telework environment within an agency-year. We then combine an agency-level analysis of realized turnover with individual-level analyses of turnover intention to test organization-level turnover patterns and individual-level sensemaking mechanisms shaping turnover intention, thereby separating employees’ relative telework exposure from the broader organizational context in which telework is experienced.

The results show only weak evidence that higher telework intensity reduces realized turnover at the organizational level. At the individual level, however, both net individual telework and organizational telework are associated with lower turnover intention. The negative effect of net individual telework is stronger among employees with fewer established role-based resources and among those perceiving stronger organizational support. The negative effect of organizational telework, by contrast, is weaker in organizations with stronger physical presence requirements and heavier supervisory intensity. Additional analyses suggest that these organizational constraints matter more for intentions to leave the federal government altogether than for within-federal mobility, indicating that telework becomes less retention-enhancing when employees view it as less compatible with remaining in federal service.

These findings suggest that the retention consequences of post-pandemic telework are neither automatic nor uniform. Telework is more likely to support retention when employees interpret it as a workable and supported arrangement, and less likely to do so when organizational conditions signal constraint or intensified control. More broadly, the study contributes to public management research by showing that telework should be understood not simply as a personnel practice, but as a multi-level organizational change whose consequences depend on employee interpretation, organizational support, and structural context. In this sense, the study helps explain why the retention consequences of telework vary systematically across settings.

Author

• Siyuan Zhao, University of Georgia
  Presenting Author