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Federal public servants are to report back to the office again. Their bosses say they mean it this time
Getting public servants back into the office with the right balance of remote work has been a journey of massive upheaval, second-guessing and adjustment. (File photo: Marten Bjork/Unsplash)
OTTAWA – Canada’s public servants are once again being ordered back to the office, but this time the government says it intends to enforce compliance.
Next week, federal public servants are supposed to be back to their desks three days per week, a slight increase over the previous rule of two or three days per week. Executives are supposed to be in their offices four days per week.
The last directive in May laying out Treasury Board’s decision was clear about compliance. This is the government’s third attempt at getting workers to embrace hybrid work arrangements.
“Let’s face it, we put down the requirement for two to three days and there were no consequences for ignoring it. That’s the real issue here. We were too soft with the initial return in obligating people to actually be in the office,” said a senior bureaucrat who is not authorized to speak publicly about the mandate.
“Some people quickly realized, ‘My manager is just going to shake their heads and say, ‘Yeah, do your best, I don’t want an argument.’”
Another senior bureaucrat said every manager knew about employees who weren’t working full days or were juggling work at home with child care, elder care or other reasons, but no one wants to confront it or even talk about it.
Christiane Fox, deputy clerk at the Privy Council Office, is heading a task force of deputies who are planning and monitoring the “state of readiness” for the mandate’s fall rollout.
She said they are braced for resistance and “lots of noise,” but enforcement and compliance will be taken seriously. Employees must comply with the order as a condition of employment and departments are prepared to enforce it to ensure consistency across government.
“We’ve looked at compliance and I think we do have to enforce this decision. My hope and my belief are that the majority of people will follow the directive and they will come to work in the fall,” said Fox.
But Treasury Board, which is the employer, won’t be looking over shoulders or monitoring compliance. It will leave that to deputy ministers, who are responsible for human-resources management within their departments. With more than 100 departments and agencies, consistency could still be a challenge.
Several senior officials say the government has to show it’s serious this time. One argued the only way to “save face with the public on this is to enforce the heck out of it.” The policy allows lots of flexibility, but if breached, it has to be enforced.
Getting public servants back into the office with the right balance of remote work has been a journey of massive upheaval, second-guessing and adjustment. Some public servants say the turmoil and distractions created are approaching the level of ongoing trouble caused by the beleaguered Phoenix pay system.
Once public servants experienced the freedom and flexibility of remote work during the pandemic, they were unwilling to give it up. That triggered an unexpected shift in entitlement and expectations.
In hindsight, the first attempt at letting departments decide how to bring their workers back to align with their operations was probably too wishy-washy. Some say the government should have brought everyone back for five days a week from the start. Others say a consistent three days would have worked better than the two-to-three-day option ordered in December 2022.
Ultimately, the mandates until now have sputtered. There are departments that averaged attendance of less than two days per person. Many point to a lack of central leadership and enforcement as core issues.
The return to office has also been a blow to already rocky labour relations. Unions have vowed to do whatever they can to reverse the three-day mandate. They are planning a national campaign, rallies, petitions, and encouraging members to swamp departments with grievances, health and safety complaints and duty to accommodate requests.
A Federal Court ruling ordering a full hearing of the union’s challenge of the Treasury Board’s latest order is a partial win for workers. They argue the mandate is unreasonable and have demanded proof for why it is necessary.
Fox said the task force closely tracks return-to-office trends in all sectors around the world. The federal government doesn’t stand out as an outlier. Most employees want hybrid and most employers are moving to hybrid with minimum days onsite.
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A 2023 survey by Capterra found that 69 per cent of Canada’s hybrid workers are onsite two to three days per week; about 25 per cent have mandatory in-office days. In the U.S., Gallup found that 50 per cent are structured hybrid, with 22 per cent onsite a minimum number of days and 40 per cent are in the office 2-3 days per week.
But the government is different from the profit-and-loss-driven private sector. A non-partisan public service is built on an attachment to a mission, a public service ethos that Fox argues is best instilled by teamwork and working together.
The issue goes beyond worker and management rights. It goes to the core role of the public service.
Fox worries the sense of mission – which shone in the public service during the pandemic – will be lost if employees aren’t working together enough, raising questions whether they could handle another crisis on that scale.
“I think we do see a gap where people are not spending enough time together. That is big in terms of culture, and you’re not going to see productivity data (showing) how well you’re doing culturally,” said Fox.
The bureaucracy has also grown like gangbusters, with 80,000 people added over the past few years – many of whom haven’t worked in an office and haven’t been introduced to the culture in-person.
“There’s a risk that connections would be harder to establish in a crisis moment without that a basis of relationships and teamwork and things we had done together,” said Fox.
The compliance protocol for the return to office is onerous, with a heavy emphasis on protecting employees’ privacy while monitoring metrics like entry-card swipes at turnstiles and computer login locations.
The burden falls on front-line managers and supervisors, some of whom are not themselves keen on the mandate. Many of them, too, would prefer more freedom and flexibility and now must track daily attendance and ensure employees are where they should be, whether working in the office or from home.
Managers are expected to take daily attendance. The results will be compiled for bosses to monitor. If they spot anything that requires looking at specific employees, a whole process kicks in that can involve union representatives and privacy officials.
And those who fail to comply will face progressive discipline, including a warning, verbal and written reprimands, suspension without pay and, finally, dismissal.
It’s unclear how deep the resistance to the mandate runs. But what is clear is that the kind of workplace they are returning to has changed dramatically. Offices are being retrofitted or have disappeared entirely as the government pushes to cut its real estate portfolio in half.
While some junior employees have never worked in an office, others are going to to workspaces with no assigned seating and personal space. Desks must be booked. Raffles are sometimes held to see who works on what day with their team to ensure there’s office space. Many pack up their equipment as they shuffle between office and home.
It’s a perfect storm for discontent.
At the same time, as one senior bureaucrat underscored, there may soon be a change of government. With Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre’s argument that the public service is too big and broken, the question won’t be whether they are at home or the office but rather whether they still have a job.
The Conservatives haven’t said anything about where they stand on return to office. They have been content to let the Liberals take the heat. Meanwhile, Liberals are dodging it by saying this is a public-service decision, not a political one.
Experts have also turned the spotlight on the bureaucracy, saying it is bloated, unable to deliver basic services, and is a drain on the country’s productivity.
Next week, Donald Savoie, one of Canada’s leading scholars on public administration, is releasing his latest book, Speaking Truth to Canadians About Their Public Service. He has long argued the public service has lost its way. The book chronicles how that has happened.
“I believe the federal public service is overstaffed; that it is providing a lower level of service to Canadians and that Canadians are losing trust in the institution,” he wrote. “I argue that it is the responsibility of the public service to provide evidence that I am wrong, not the other way around.”
Fox says that while public perception doesn’t factor directly into the return-to-office decision, decision-makers can’t ignore it, either. “It goes to trust: trust in government, trust in the public service, trust we are working to serve Canadians,” she said.
This article was produced with support from the Accenture Fellowship on the Future of the Public Service. Read more of Kathryn’s articles.
This article first appeared on Policy Options and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
