Petition for Transparency, Collaboration, and Evidence-Based Workplace Decisions Regarding the University of Delaware's Expanded Return-to-Campus Requirement
To: President Laura Carlson, the University Board of Trustees, and Executive Leadership
We, the undersigned non-union, salaried professional and administrative employees of the University of Delaware and our supporters respectfully request that the University pause further implementation of its expanded return-to-campus policy until employees have had an opportunity for meaningful collaboration and the University has publicly explained the basis for this decision.
The Operational Backbone of UD
Non-union, salaried professional and administrative employees are the operational backbone of the University. Approximately 3,000 employees—about 64% of the University's workforce—support every aspect of the institution's mission, from admissions and advising to research, administration, finance, technology, facilities, student services, libraries, human resources, communications, and academic operations. We are the force that keeps this institution operating every day.
Because our work enables the University to fulfill its mission, we deserve a meaningful voice when decisions fundamentally alter our daily working lives, finances, health, and well-being.
Currently, we face critical challenges to shared governance:
Lack of Direct Communication: Many of us first learned of these changes through indirect communications rather than through an institution-wide discussion.
Inconsistency with Board-Approved Strategic Plan: A return-to-campus mandate is misaligned with Forward and Forever: The Strategic Plan for the University of Delaware formally approved by the University of Delaware Board of Trustees. The plan specifically details our objective to "Recruit and retain excellent faculty and staff, providing flexible working conditions and enhancing support systems that ensure career success and advancement."
For positions posted on or after June 8, 2026, all newly hired employees and employees who transfer positions within the University will be expected to work on campus five days per week. This structural change is not only in opposition to the spirit of the Strategic Plan, but it strongly signals a long-term intent to phase out hybrid work entirely.
Premature Implementation: Portions of the policy have already been implemented for new employees, while additional changes are scheduled to take effect before staff can provide feedback. In some instances, employees are being afforded 30 days or less to entirely restructure childcare, elder care, and household budgets. Such an abhorrent disregard for personal well-being fails to recognize that employees cannot instantly re-engineer their professional and family lives to accommodate a sudden directive issued entirely without transparency; collaboration with those most impacted; or the supporting evidence and analysis required for responsible decision-making.
Disruption of Established Practice: For many employees, this change is particularly significant because it negates years of established workplace practice.
This change calls into question not only issues of employee preference, but of institutional transparency, shared governance, evidence-based decision-making, and respect for the people whose work enables the University to fulfill its mission.
An Established Framework: Relying on a Sanctioned Workplace Model
This policy shift is a major operational adjustment, causing a fundamental disruption to how thousands of employees have safely and productively structured their lives for over half a decade.
Following the 2020 transition to fully remote work and the subsequent return to campus in Fall 2021, remote and hybrid work arrangements became an ongoing, successful workplace standard.
Relying upon this sanctioned model, employees built long-term childcare, elder care, school logistics, and family routines around established university expectations.
Staff have invested their own household budgets into creating home workspaces to maintain high institutional productivity along with flexibility.
The University not only permitted this framework; it actively utilized it to recruit, hire, onboard, evaluate, promote, and retain top talent under the explicit promise of flexibility.
Uprooting this framework without a measured, collaborative approach directly penalizes employees who built their lives around the University’s own long-standing workplace standards.
Key Questions for University Leadership
We respectfully ask the University to answer the following questions.
What problem is this policy intended to solve?
• What evidence demonstrates that existing hybrid work arrangements were no longer meeting institutional needs?
• Were particular departments or job classifications experiencing measurable problems?
• Was hybrid work demonstrably failing for specific categories of work? If so, how does applying a uniform policy across positions with fundamentally different responsibilities address said problems?
How will success be measured?
• What specific outcomes does the University expect?
• How will those outcomes be measured, and over what period of time?
• How will the University determine whether the benefits justify the costs imposed on employees?
• Will the University publish the results of any post-implementation evaluation so employees can understand whether the policy achieved its intended objectives?
What alternatives were considered?
• Did leadership evaluate position-specific workplace expectations rather than a uniform standard for vastly different jobs?
• Were department-level schedules considered to allow managers to align workplace presence directly with specific operational needs?
• Were partial or flexible hybrid schedules explored to balance on-campus engagement with modern workplace efficiency?
Were employees consulted? If not, why not?
• Why were thousands of employees not consulted before decisions were made that would impact their daily work lives, finances, personal time, and well-being?
• Why were principles of collaboration and shared governance not applied to this decision?
• Why are additional implementation steps proceeding before employees have had an opportunity to provide meaningful feedback?
Were the financial and time-commitment impacts analyzed?
• Unpaid Commute Time: Even a modest 30-minute one-way commute adds 5 extra hours per week—or 260 hours per year—of unpaid, work-related transit time.
• Additional Out-of-Pocket Employee Expenses: When combined with campus parking and navigating to offices, employees are effectively committing to longer work weeks for fewer net dollars in their pockets. Daily on-campus presence often mandates immediate, recurring secondary expenditures including the cost of expanded professional attire and meals consumed away from home. As just one example, moving from a hybrid parking permit to a full-time permit forces an immediate cost increase of $97 to $276 more per year, based on published parking rates from 2025, in parking fees alone, while fuel, tolls, routine vehicle maintenance, and vehicle depreciation add an estimated $1,250–1,300 annually in out-of-pocket workplace expenses.
• Household Care Disruptions: A sudden 5-hour-per-week time deficit, for example, directly disrupts fragile childcare schedules, elder care responsibilities, and school pick-up/drop-off logistics, creating immense compounding stress and additional expense for families.
• Erosion of Personal Wellness: Forcing these extra unpaid hours back into the weekly routine directly strips employees of vital personal time that had previously been available for attention to mental health, exercise, medical appointments, and critical self-care.
• Collective Financial Hit: Across approximately 3,000 affected employees, vehicle operation and campus parking adjustments alone represent an estimated blended average of $4.0 million to $4.7 million annually in employee-borne costs. This multimillion-dollar figure, stripped from employee household budgets, does not even account for the compounding secondary expenses of restructuring childcare, professional attire, or daily workplace meals.
• Inflationary Impact: These additional costs arrive during a period when American households continue to experience the effects of sustained inflation. Since early 2020, overall consumer prices in the United States have increased by approximately 24–25%, placing additional pressure on household budgets. This strain is further compounded by soaring, highly volatile fuel prices which inject massive financial uncertainty into daily transit. Against that backdrop, even modest increases in commuting, parking, and workplace expenses may have significant consequences for employees already managing substantially higher living costs than existed when hybrid work arrangements first became commonplace.
• The True Cost of Incremental Shifts: Transitioning even a single remote day back to campus is a major adjustment as it strips away established remote hours, triggering an immediate and mandatory 20% to 25% increase in weekly commuting time, fuel consumption, and vehicle depreciation. Any attempt to frame these incremental steps as “continued flexibility” ignores the immediate financial costs and disruptions imposed on household logistics and family budgets.
Were the impacts on employee well-being evaluated?
• Many employees have invested their own money in ergonomic home workspaces, including standing desks, ergonomic chairs, monitor arms, adjustable workstations, treadmill or walking desks, and improved lighting. For many employees, these workspaces now exceed the ergonomic quality available in shared campus offices.
• Has the University evaluated the health effects of replacing these environments with less ergonomic workspaces and increasing commuting time that reduces opportunities for exercise, medical appointments, caregiving, and self-care? Have additional ergonomic accommodations been considered for employees returning to campus?
Were these impacts distributed equitably?
• Do lower-paid employees bear a disproportionately greater financial burden?
• How are employees from vulnerable communities—those with long commutes, caregiving responsibilities, disabilities, or chronic health conditions—affected?
• Have equity considerations been incorporated into the University's analysis?
What will be the impact on recruitment and retention?
• In a competitive job market that prioritizes flexibility, how will this policy prevent the widespread loss of institutional knowledge as experienced staff depart? Has the University evaluated the hidden costs of increased turnover, lower employee engagement, and a diminished ability to compete for top-tier talent?
• Restricting flexible work arrangements only to legacy staff while mandating a full five day on-campus workweek for anyone hired or transferred on or after June 8, 2026 creates an untenable, multi-tiered workforce structure. Forcing colleagues who perform equivalent duties to operate under different workplace rules inherently breeds artificial inequality and sows division. Rather than fostering a collaborative environment, this approach will fuel unnecessary resentment, erode workplace morale, and diminish trust in leadership.
How does this decision align with the University's stated need for space?
• If classrooms, laboratories, advising areas, and student spaces are at a premium, has the University evaluated whether maintaining flexibility for appropriate positions would allow more administrative space to be repurposed for students?
• Could increased workplace flexibility for appropriate positions reduce future office renovation or construction costs?
• What is the most efficient and best use of limited campus space?
How does this impact the University’s sustainability goals?
The University of Delaware heavily promotes its campus sustainability and carbon-footprint reduction goals. Forcing 3,000 employees to commute more frequently injects thousands of metric tons of unnecessary carbon emissions back into the local environment, directly contradicting UD’s green initiatives.
• Has an institutional environmental impact study been conducted to evaluate how thousands of additional weekly vehicle transits will affect UD's publicized sustainability targets?
• Will the administration publish the data showing how a blanket return-to-campus mandate aligns with their climate commitments?
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1. Pause further implementation of expanded return-to-campus requirements.
2. Share the evidence, analyses, and decision-making process supporting this policy.
3. Conduct meaningful collaboration with non-union, salaried professional and administrative employees before additional implementation.
4. Evaluate role-based workplace flexibility rather than a uniform expectation across positions with significantly different responsibilities.
5. Publish a summary of the anticipated institutional benefits alongside the anticipated financial, operational, well-being, recruitment, retention, and equity impacts considered during the University's decision-making process.
6. Provide reasonable transition time and implementation flexibility that recognizes employees have organized their personal and professional lives around a workplace model that has existed for several years.
We recognize that many University positions require full-time campus presence. Others demonstrably do not. Workplace expectations should reflect the actual nature of the work rather than a single standard applied uniformly across vastly different professional and administrative positions.
The University of Delaware asks its employees to make decisions grounded in evidence, thoughtful analysis, and a commitment to continuous improvement. We respectfully ask that the University apply those same principles to decisions affecting its own workforce.
The University of Delaware staff is the force that keeps this institution operating every day. We deserve a transparent, evidence-based, and equitable process, and we ask for the opportunity to be heard before decisions that materially affect our work, our finances, our health, and our well-being become permanent.
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