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The Washington Metro has become the latest organization to order staff back to the office, ending work-from-home for all staff effective July 2025.
The changes were announced in an email Thursday authored by General Manager Randy Clarke.
Clark oversees the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority, the agency that runs Metro.
Senior Metro employees are expected in-office five days a week from February, while more junior staff members have their return staggered, rising to four days a week from February and hitting five days in July.
The GM said that bringing staff back to the office full-time would “improve collaboration” in 2025, describing it as a “pivotal year for Metro to support large-scale regional events.”
As well as a Presidential Inauguration to handle, the region will also experience an influx of transport passengers a World Pride event being hosted in D.C.
Metro has also promised the introduction of automatic train operations and credit card payments, major steps forward that will come with technical challenges.
There has been plenty of attention on government agencies in the wake of the 2024 Presidential Election, with the incoming Trump administration promising the return of federal workers to office.
Reports estimate that the proportion of federal workers within Metro’s commuters has halved since pre-Pandemic levels, now sitting at roughly 20%.
Speaking in an interview Friday, Clarke asserted that the move has “nothing to do with anyone else.”
“There’s a lot going on at the organization,” he noted. However, the GM earlier said at a transportation forum held a week after the election that it’s “fair to say we expect maybe some more people back to the office at the end of January.”
According to Clarke, approximately 85% of Metro’s 13,500 employees already work in-person. Metro has three main offices in Virginia, D.C., and Maryland.
Metro joins employers including Amazon and the Washington Post in calling staff back to the office full-time. Meanwhile, other organizations including Starbucks and Duolingo have gradually increased expectations for in-office work since the Pandemic.
Employers have attributed the changes in work-from-home policy to the need for greater collaboration, creativity, and productivity; but have encountered pushback from employees and HR experts, who see RTO mandates as a reduction in flexibility and reference studies that show workers are not necessarily more productive or collaborative in-person.
Other barriers for businesses increasing in-office work have included capacity limitations, with Amazon delaying the rollout of its return-to-office policy for some staff from January to as late as May.
