Booz Allen expects number of staff working in office to decline

Booz Allen Hamilton is expecting the number of its staff working full time in its offices and on government premises to fall from previous levels, according to the federal contractor’s CEO.

Speaking on a second-quarter earnings call, Horacio Rozanski praised the creativity of the company’s clients during the COVID-19 pandemic and said many continue to embrace new ways of working.

“[W]e have a group of people who work full time at government and our facilities. And that too will continue, although we expect it to proportionately decline from historical levels,” Rozanski said. “Our clients have shown a great deal of creativity over the course of the pandemic. And based on this experience, many are interested in flexible models that better serve their missions while reducing the number of people who are 100% onsite.”

The comments come as agency staff return to the office and follow an earlier policy advising federal departments to consider embracing a more geographically distributed workforce. The Office of Personnel Management also issued further guidance on that policy July 23 “to assist agencies … as they plan for the safe, increased return of Federal employees to physical workplaces (“reentry”) and the post-reentry work environment.”

Agencies have each set their own strategy for bringing their workforce back to the office with input from the Safer Federal Workforce Task Force.

According to the prior guidance, federal departments were advised to embrace more telework “where possible and appropriate,” and where it could help to benefit equity, inclusion and the delivery of missions.

The geographic location of the federal government jobs was highlighted last month with the Biden administration’s Executive Order on Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Accessibility, which was intended to examine new ways of getting underserved and minority communities into the workforce.

Responding to questions from analysts on the company’s earnings call, Booz Allen’s executive team said also that the company’s projection for achieving about $200 million in cost savings from its acquisition of Liberty IT, remains unchanged.

In an interview earlier this year with FedScoop, Booz Allen’s head of civil business Kristine Martin Anderson said the consulting company’s “number one” job following the $725 million deal would be to deliver on existing contracts with the Department of Veterans Affairs, but that the transaction will allow the company to deploy Liberty’s resources across other areas of its balance sheet.