Three years after the World Health Organization declared that COVID-19 was no longer an immediate public health emergency, on-site worker attendance remains below pre-pandemic levels.
According to a recent Gallup poll, as of May 2026, 52% of employees reported working on a hybrid schedule (part in-office, part at-home), 26% of employees reported teleworking exclusively, and just 22% of employees reported working completely on-site. By contrast, in January 2019, about one year before the pandemic’s onset, 60% of employees reported working exclusively on-site, whereas just 8% of employees were exclusively remote, and 32% of employees were on a hybrid schedule.
As employers seek to restore pre-pandemic workplace practices through return-to-office policies, they should be aware that an in-person attendance requirement does not negate their obligation to participate in the interactive process to explore whether there is a need to reasonably accommodate qualifying employees – and does not preclude telework as a potential accommodation.
The EEOC provided recent guidance that may help employers navigate telework accommodation requests under federal and California law:
Yes. According to EEOC guidance, when a disabled employee cannot perform the essential functions of his or her job position, the employer should consider telework as a reasonable accommodation. If there are alternative accommodations that permit the employee to perform...
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