Minister says expanded return-to-office rules about efficiency, but some public servants disagree

Federal public service employees in Ottawa are protesting the decision to make in-office work mandatory four days a week. Rachel Aiello reports.

Monday marked the start of a new federal policy requiring all core federal public servants to be at work in-person four days a week, and while the rollout hasn’t gone over well with all workers, the federal finance minister says the move is about efficiency.

“We need to bring people back to deliver service to Canadians, and at the same time do that in the way that would allow people to provide those services in the most efficient way,” Finance Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne told reporters in Ottawa on Monday.

Speaking ahead of an event touting the start of pre-budget consultations inside Finance Canada’s downtown office building, the minister said the government has made adjustments to office infrastructure “to make sure we can have all the public servants be housed properly.”

The Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat said the new mandate “is to support the government’s ambitious agenda.”

‘A lot of wasted time’ some workers say

Though, public servants that CTV News spoke with on Monday saw the situation differently, arguing that the change won’t make them any more productive, and that a large amount of their days are still spent connecting with colleagues virtually.

“I’m coming into the office to do basically what I would do at home, and it’s just a little bit more difficult, because you know, the person next to me is on a phone call, the person in front of me is on a phone call,” said public servant Sydney Campbell.

“I also commute an hour and a half one way in my car, that’s not including like taking a bus or anything, so it’s just a lot of wasted time in my opinion.”

Functional or comfortable space is also a concern workers expressed, with several departments not having adequate room to accommodate more staff needing room to work in-person, amid renovations and downsizing.

“There’s room in the building if you want to sit on, like, a stool that has no ergonomic support in the middle of a kitchen. But I can’t do that and do my job for the whole day,” said federal worker Meg Julian.

“It’s not actually about doing a better job, it’s about being seen to be there to check off a box on someone’s list,” she said, also expressing frustration over the mandate complicating her child-care arrangements.

The federal government’s old hybrid work rules – which had been in effect since September 2024 – required public servants to be in the office for a minimum of three days per week.

All executive-level federal employees have been reporting to the office five-days-a-week since May 4.

Part of a broader trend, expert says

One human resource and management expert CTV News spoke with on Monday said that in the private sector the trend is also towards more in-office time.

“It’s not an unusual move,” said McMaster University professor Erin Reid. “There is definitely a trend towards calling people in more and more.”

But Reid noted that it can result in declining job satisfaction.

“For white-collar work, like for computer work, it seems like two to three days a week in office is the sweet spot. So, once you get past three days a week in office for those computer jobs, you see, you start to see fall offs in job satisfaction.”

While working from home may become less prevalent in both the private and public sectors, her advice for employers is finding a “happy medium.”

“You have to really balance the benefits of the flexibility with the costs,” she said.

With files from CTV News’ Samantha Pope, CTV News Ottawa’s Kimberley Johnson and Josh Pringle