The Public Service Returns to the Office

In May 2024 the Treasury Board Secretariat called the public service back to the office under a hybrid work mandate that required a minimum three days a week of in-person attendance for most public servants and four days for executives, effective September. This was, essentially, attempt number three at such a mandate, but this time the public service leadership clearly meant business. Most public servants had been working remotely since the onset of COVID and many who were hired during that period had no experience of non-remote work.

Politicians have mostly been officially neutral on the issue of remote work, saying it’s an operational matter for the public service itself. But public service leaders are hardly oblivious to matters of optics, and it’s notable that this was essentially a one-size-fits all mandate that wasn’t based on clear operational analytics beyond a belief in the importance of “consistent in-person interactions”. That said, public servants have no inherent right to work remotely, and it’s clearly legitimate for the government to consider workplace culture as well as the practices of other sectors that are amenable to remote work, with which it is broadly consistent. Further, a senior-level, multi-sector committee has been struck to study productivity in the public service and report back by the end of March.

Meanwhile, public service union leaders have pushed back vigorously, including through court challenges, and it seems pretty clear that a lot of public servants now regard this flexibility as one of the major attractions of their jobs. What’s more, a dearth of office space and inadequate public transit are making the in-office experience more difficult than it should be, at least in the fair city of Ottawa.

The public sector has a lot of rules that are intended less to serve operational needs than to reassure citizens that the public service is managed with probity. Still, some assessment of how the mandate lines up against operational needs would be in order. Hopefully the productivity working group will shed some light on this when it reports in the Spring.

Karl Salgo is an Associate and Executive Advisor at the IOG.