Originally published in The Hill Times on September 2, 2024, in English.
In less than two weeks, thousands of federal public sector employees will be forced to spend three days a week crammed into ill-equipped and makeshift offices – just to be on the same video calls they were doing from home. Why? No one really knows.
Ignoring the chaos ahead, Christiane Fox, deputy clerk of the Privy Council Office, told CBC just this week that federal employees were being pressured back into offices “to build a sense of teams that collaborate towards difficult public policy challenges."
For some reason, the government continues to push this idea that this decision was made to boost collaboration – irrespective of the anticipated dire impact on employees’ productivity and performance, or on services to Canadians. In fact, hours of work are expected to be lost as employees struggle to book a desk or find an open workstation, while managers must spend an inordinate amount of time monitoring and reporting on their team’s in-office presence.
It is hard to imagine what problem they are trying to address here. Government workers have been functioning effectively since the COVID-19 pandemic forced an immediate shift to online work – an inevitable transformation that was already underway. With the technology and tools available today, collaboration has never been better. Federal unions have repeatedly asked senior management in the federal public sector to provide a single productivity study that backs up their claims – Ms. Fox, we are still waiting on you and your colleagues to show why Canadian taxpayers should pay for entirely optional office-related costs.
The picture is bleak ahead of the September 9 enforcement of the return-to-office mandate. Most offices do not have enough space for teams to sit together, or enough meeting spaces for them to use for “collaboration.” In fact, some employees don’t have desk space at all, and will be forced to work at kitchen counters or cafeteria tables.
Infrastructure Canada and Statistics Canada have been granted exemptions to the three-day mandate because they simply do not have the space. Many federal office buildings are already being slated for housing conversion – as they should be. Forcing more workers into less space more often while ignoring the huge opportunity cost of what could be done with these buildings shows that our management elites need sober policy advice that CAPE members would be glad to provide.
Most of our work will remain virtual no matter how hard the government tries to shove employees into bedbug ridden offices for a completely empty concept like “collaboration”. Not every job requires the constant input of colleagues within spitting distance of each other. The reality is that many of our members working in different offices and cities have built meaningful and productive relationships in the pivot to the virtual office, while the government gets to pull from a much deeper talent pool. It is called the ‘Canadian’ government, coast to coast to coast.
Fox also stated that federal employees "understand the role of a public service and [are] in a position to learn by observation, by the things they see happening in their workplace."
The claim is incredibly naïve and outlandish if considering the amount of work federal employees handle per hour per day with little time to pay attention to what others are doing. Keeping your eyeballs on your colleagues ‘to learn’ is a luxury afforded to no one, and not to mention creepy. Plus, let's be honest, employees learn best through coaching, training and doing. So, just like the nature of work has adapted, so too should the training. New employees were onboarded and mentored throughout the pandemic quite successfully? What exactly are they trying to fix here, except the profit margins of a few commercial landlords in the National Capital Region? The Ottawa business community supports the pivot to a remote work by design office culture, while Christiane struggles to articulate her point.
Another rich argument put forward by Fox is “public perception”. Well, in the end it is the government’s job to change the public’s perception of the future of work rather than reinforcing it and throwing its own employees under the bus. What about boosted productivity? The millions of dollars saved letting go of costly, outdated office buildings? The reduction of car-emitted pollution? Access to new buildings for affordable housing and desperately needed childcare centres? Crickets.
The government is shooting itself in the foot while putting its other foot in its mouth. Not a pretty picture. The future of work is here to stay. Remote work is a global phenomenon that will transform our lives and our societies for the better. That ship has sailed, and a brand-new generation of talented Canadian workers will make remote work a key criterion in their employment search. At some point in the future, the government will have to backpedal on its current position if it wants to attract and retain staff. Canadians don’t want this government to waste vast sums of money on frivolous and outdated management theories that the overwhelming majority of federal workers have repeatedly rejected.
Last, let’s not forget the irony of how this new return-to-office policy was developed by senior government staff working from the comfort of their homes.
So, deputy clerk, what are you really talking about?
Nathan Prier
President
Canadian Association of Professional Employees
