Federal government claims back-to-office mandate will boost careers, improve services

In less than two weeks, the federal government’s back-to-office mandate for public servants comes into effect. Employees will be required to work in-person at least three days a week and despite pushback from workers, the government says this is the right move.

The government’s new hybrid work policy requires public servants to be on-site a minimum of three days a week starting Sept. 9; for executives, the requirement is four days a week.

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“What motivated our decision is our ability to perform as organizations. That's really why we want people back,” said Christiane Fox, Deputy Clerk of the Privy Council and Associate Secretary.

Fox says it will be better for employees' careers and create a better work environment.

“I think that our expectation is that, as we build stronger teams and stronger cultures, that leads to better services to Canadians, which is our ultimate objective,” said Fox.

But the union representing more than 65,000 federal workers says the majority strongly opposed the mandate.

“I don't know what kind of culture the government wants to create, but that's not the culture our members want. Our members have shown that we can continue providing services to Canadians through telework. Our members have shown that we can continue to collaborate across different levels of the federal public service through telework. It's been working. So we should we should keep going with that solution instead of trying to, to implement this forced return to office,” said Alex Silas, National Executive Vice-President of the Public Service Alliance of Canada.

The union did a survey earlier this summer that specified 91 per cent of the more than 65,000 union members strongly opposed the return-to-the-office mandate and 75 per cent were willing to take action to fight the new mandate.