Most staffers with the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board don’t need to return to their pre-pandemic workplaces this month, a spokesperson with the federal safety watchdog said Tuesday morning.
The Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB) is no longer requiring a return to work on Jan. 24, as earlier scheduled, “but is giving the staff the opportunity to return or to extend maximum telework through the end of February, based on their personal situations,” associate director for board operations Tara Tadlock said via email.
“Additionally, the Board has put into place new, more liberal telework options going forward,” Tadlock said. “The leadership team continues to monitor the Omicron variant situation closely and has taken steps to maximize safety.”
The DNFSB, set up by congress to provide independent health and safety advice to the Department of Energy for its defense-nuclear sites, has roughly 100 employees split between the board’s downtown Washington, D.C., offices and the field locations. Like most other federal government entities, DNFSB has allowed most of its people to work from home since the COVID-19 pandemic started to spread across the United States in early 2020.
Within the past week, the DOE also has tweaked its return-to-onsite-work plan. The department now expects most of its thousands of employees to return to their pre-pandemic job sites by mid-March. With the emergence of the highly-contagious omicron variant of COVID-19, DOE delayed plans to bring most workers back by mid-February.
