Canadian employers take an increasingly harder line on returning to the office

Financial services firms, the federal government and other employers are increasingly taking a harder line on remote work, with more mandating their staff to come into the office a minimum number of days a week and others threatening to discipline or terminate employees if they refuse to do so.

Starting this month, the federal government is requiring employees to be in the office three times a week, up from twice a week previously.

In the private sector, insurer Canada Life has increased the number of required in-person days to three from two starting this month, while Telus Corp. has told its call-centre staff that they have to work in person three times a week or can opt to leave with severance pay.

Employers are insisting on more in-person work to help foster more collaboration and ensure new employees have an opportunity to learn on the job. The federal government also cited collaboration for its new requirements, saying it will help get new talent up to speed as well as build a “culture of performance that is consistent with values and ethics of the public service,” according to the Treasury Board Secretariat’s website.

For civil servants, the return to office started with executives being in the office three times a week. Now executives are required to be in the office a minimum of four times a week and civil servants at least three days a week. The move has sparked protests from one of the unions representing federal civil servants, the Public Service Alliance of Canada, which has argued that remote work increases productivity and improves work-life balance.

But the government has not backed down, and says failure to comply will have repercussions.

“Where an employee deliberately fails to comply with a telework agreement, a delegated manager should consult with their labour relations experts and consider applying relevant and progressive discipline to correct the behaviour,” said Rola Salem, a spokesperson for the Treasury Board Secretariat, which oversees the rules for government spending and the public service.

The discipline can include verbal reprimands, written reprimands, suspension without pay and finally termination of employment, according to Ms. Salem.

Since the COVID-19 pandemic upended office work, employers have wrestled with the future of their workplaces and whether to bring employees back to the office. During the early days of the health crisis, most employers told their staff to work from home and a rash of businesses such as PwC, Air Canada, Oracle Corp. and Shopify Inc. tried to get rid of some of their office space.

When pandemic restrictions began to ease, workers rebelled against going back to the office five days a week and their employers mostly acquiesced and appeared to embrace flexible work. Some of the major Canadian banks, for example, said they would move to hybrid work, while Canada’s second-largest insurer, Sun Life Financial, was among the first to introduce a flexible policy in 2021 where employees determined their own work arrangements. Large established businesses such as global software company SAP SE cut office space in Montreal and Vancouver and revamped it to cater to a mobile work force.

But as time passes and the health crisis eases, employers are becoming more prescriptive about the number of days workers are required to be in the office. In some cases, they are taking steps to enforce the in-person work.

Earlier this year, Manulife Financial Corp. increased the number of required days to three from two, according to the insurer’s spokesperson Luke Shane. Manulife first tried to implement a three-day in-person work week in early 2021. But after hearing employees wanted a more gradual approach, chief executive Roy Gori dropped the requirement to two days.

Canada Life employees are required to be in the office three days a week starting Sept. 9, according to spokesperson Leezann Freed-Lobchuk. Staff have been told to be in the office every Tuesday and Thursday, as well as a third day based on their division’s requirements. Ms. Freed-Lobchuk said there are some exceptions to the rule where certain employees may be exempt from the return-to-office policy. Senior executives will continue to be in the office four to five days, she added, which has been the “expectation” since the company first began to return to the office in early 2021.

At Telus, which said call centre workers have to be in the office three times a week, the union representing those workers has obtained a temporary injunction from the B.C. Supreme Court to stop the company from carrying through on its plan while awaiting arbitration.

Telus spokesperson Brandi Merker said the company recognizes in-office work “represents an evolution to the way we’ve worked over the last few years,” and is offering generous voluntary-separation packages for anyone in the call-centre operation who makes the personal decision that this way of working doesn’t meet their needs.

Ms. Merker did not provide an answer on whether staff at Telus headquarters also are required to be in the office a minimum of three days a week, saying only that team members are in the office a few days a week or more based on personal preference and their team norms.

The Canadian Investment Regulatory Organization, the investment-industry watchdog based in Toronto, requires its employees to work in the office two set days a week plus an additional four days a month that can be chosen by the employee.

“This policy aims to provide a balance between maintaining flexibility for employees while ensuring we continue to fulfill our mandate of protecting investors and supporting the health of Canadian capital markets,” said Joanna Nicholson, the watchdog’s manager of corporate communications and public affairs.

The investment watchdog said its leaders work closely with their teams to co-ordinate their in-office days and ensure everyone is following their remote-work policy.

“Should employees fail to comply, it is considered a performance issue and will be addressed accordingly,” Ms. Nicholson said.

The mayors of Toronto and Ottawa have lamented the loss of activity in downtown cores. But Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow has said “when it comes to returning to in-office work, it’s up to employers and workers to determine what’s best.”

Toronto city hall’s hybrid-work policy requires employees to be in the office a minimum of two to three days a week depending on their role, according to the city’s website.

In the national capital, about 85 per cent of City of Ottawa staff are required to be in the workplace every day and the remainder need to work on-site a minimum of two days a week, according to the city’s chief human resources officer Pamela LeMaistre.

Activity in the country’s major office hubs are all below prepandemic levels, with the lowest levels in downtown Ottawa where federal civil servants account for a significant number of the city’s employees.

Over the past three months, the percentage of employees working in the office in downtown Ottawa averaged 49 per cent of prepandemic occupancy levels, according to research from commercial real estate brokerage Colliers International Group Inc. (Colliers used data from Environics Analytics which uses anonymized cellphone data to track movement to and from work.)

In downtown Toronto, the country’s financial capital and largest business hub, the percentage of employees in the office averaged 61 per cent of prepandemic occupancy levels. In Montreal, the average was 59 per cent, Vancouver 64 per cent, Calgary 66 per cent and Victoria 74 per cent, according to Colliers.

Meanwhile, some companies have decided not to introduce mandatory requirements to work in the office, but are increasing the pressure on employees to come in voluntarily.

At Miller Thomson LLP law firm, there is no mandate to be in the office. But the managing partner in the firm’s Toronto office, Kenneth Rosenstein, called it a “very, very strong expectation.”

“Are they going to be penalized in comp [compensation] for instance if they don’t? No. But we have a very holistic approach to comp and take intangibles into account,” Mr. Rosenstein said. “I will be taking note of who is coming in and who is not coming in.”