Back in April, we heard from a nurse at the Cheyenne VA named Birgitt Paul. She helps coordinate home health care and was concerned then about how upcoming return-to-office orders (RTO) would impact her job.
In the spring, the Department of Veterans Affairs Secretary Doug Collins also announced plans to cut about 15% of its workforce, equating to roughly 80,000 people.
The agency has since paused that large-scale reduction in force, saying it’s on track to reduce VA staff by about 30,000 employees by the end of fiscal year 2025. A press release from July 7 states that the VA has cut enough people because of “normal attrition, early retirements, deferred resignations and the federal hiring freeze.”
But Paul said the conditions created by the agency’s RTO mandate this spring has led some of her colleagues to leave their jobs. She’s back in the office now and talked with Wyoming Public Radio’s Hannah Habermann about how that transition is playing out for her.
Editor's Note: This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Birgitt Paul: What I share with you is my personal experience and my opinion and not the opinion of VA National. I'm not a spokesperson for the VA. I'm just a person working to take care of veterans and this is my experience.
I went from in January, absolutely loving my job, to continuing to reframe my life, to remind myself that this is a job and my priority is me and my family. And if I have to make a decision, I will choose my family and me.
And I didn't ever feel like that. I wasn't in that situation before.
Returning to the Office
I am local to our community, so I was able to just move right back onto station and I have a 10-minute commute. But there were people on our team of 10 that would have immediately had a 90-minute, one-way commute. That was never what we were ever told would be happening as we took these remote positions.
It's kind of nice when our leadership has the ability to kind of pop in and say, ‘Hi, ’ but that's actually been a lot less than it was before. I just think that they're tasked with so many responsibilities right now. My direct leaders and our station leadership have done the best that they possibly can in this situation.
Obviously, people love to work from home, but for all of us it was a productivity thing too. But this idea that we're all collaborating together – we're still doing everything by Zoom.
Before [RTO], there was kind of a workflow to what I did because I was alone and I could assess what needed to be addressed primarily, and then address it without losing track or losing my place. Now I have to be very diligent before I leave every day to come up with my to-do list and keep it organized so that I don't miss steps.
Prior to the RTO, I had somebody that was supporting me directly for a specific amount of time. It became apparent as we moved back in and things were changing that that would change also.
My patience level with my family when I come home is different. I know that everybody was worried when everybody worked from home that you couldn't turn it off when you came out of your office door. That was easy for me, compared to leaving the facility and getting to my car and coming home and already being stressed about [things like] dinner used to be at a certain time and now it's at a different time now.
The Bigger Picture
But those are minor inconveniences to me. What I really want people to know is we had a team of 10 and we currently have a team of seven.
Everybody said that these positions that we held were important and couldn't be cut, but when you RTO people and you put obstacles in their way, they have to make choices about their mental health and their family's wellbeing, and none of us are holding that against anybody.
But there is a lot of guilt. There's a lot of people feeling like they have failed, and that to me is sad.
It's not sustainable to have a commute that's inappropriate. We live in Wyoming and, yes, we've made decisions about [that], but we would also have made decisions about a job not based on a 90-minute commute. We don't live in New York, that's not something that we normally do, so to watch people grapple with that is so hard.
We are losing really good people who were really good at their jobs and were really committed to taking care of veterans because of some reason that makes no sense. I'm not back collaborating with everybody. I'm not sitting at a table working with all the people on our team, and that's been disheartening.
The barrage of emails, like, ‘Yes, you have to do your five bullet points,’ ‘No, now you don't have to do your five bullet points, but now we want you to tell us what is wrong with the system in one sentence and give us the solution in one sentence,’ and to have national leadership have that much disrespect about what we do, that I could possibly do anything in a sentence, is mind boggling and disheartening.
So now we won't be getting RIF-ed [Reduced in Force], but I've been pretty clear with everybody that I've talked to that they changed our lives with two emails and they can do it again.
I feel myself saying these ridiculous cliches like, ‘Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.’ I'm not going to be caught off guard like that again.
It does impact how you feel about your job. [In the past] we might've had moments of stress, we might've had a new fiscal year or some infrastructure issue that we deal with ourselves in just working for the government, but never have I frequently reminded myself weekly that this is a job. It is not my life and that makes me sad.
