One year in and it's still hard to get the data
Finding it hard to get your staff back to the office? More than a year after Ottawa’s return-to-office mandate took effect, Canada’s largest employer is still struggling to track whether its employees are showing up.
Government departments have adopted a patchwork of attendance-monitoring systems, with no uniform approach to enforcing the Treasury Board’s requirement that public servants work on site three days a week — and executives four. While officials maintain that compliance is strong, the fragmented data tell a more complicated story.
Compliance uneven, monitoring inconsistent
Documents obtained by the Ottawa Citizen through access-to-information requests show that even within the Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat — the department responsible for implementing the policy — compliance has hovered around 70 per cent.
In September 2024, the first month of the mandate, only 65.26 per cent of Treasury Board employees met the three-day minimum. By the end of the month, that figure had improved to just over 80 per cent before dropping back to 71 per cent in October.
Treasury Board spokesperson Ada Bayli said the internal data “understates employees’ actual compliance” and doesn’t reflect those with temporary exemptions, training, or travel status. “There is no issue with compliance,” she said, adding that the department continues to monitor attendance through a combination of system data and manager oversight.
Still, the department has not confirmed how many employees fall into exempt categories, nor whether the compliance rate has materially improved since the fall of 2024.
Departments develop their own tracking systems
The challenge extends across the federal public service, which includes nearly 280,000 employees. Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC), for example, only began tracking attendance this month through a pilot program covering roughly 2,500 staff. The initiative, spokesperson Rémi Larivière said, “aims to ensure transparency and consistency in how on-site attendance is tracked, and will provide managers with data to help address cases of non-compliance.”
Other departments have implemented their own systems — some technological, others manual. Employment and Social Development Canada (ESDC) uses aggregated login data from government networks to estimate when staff are on site. “Employee presence is also primarily assessed through direct observations by management,” spokesperson Mila Roy said, adding that ESDC is “pleased with recent attendance rates” but remains “vigilant.”
Health Canada and the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) rely on anonymized Microsoft 365 login data to gauge office attendance. Between late June and mid-September this year, Health Canada employees with hybrid arrangements were on site for 95 per cent of their scheduled days, while PHAC staff recorded 87 per cent. “The data provide management with a snapshot of attendance trends rather than individual tracking,” said spokesperson Mark Johnson.
Global Affairs Canada reported similar results, with compliance between 78 and 90 per cent, though officials note that business travel and annual leave frequently distort the figures. “Considering these significant and unpredictable factors, the department considers GAC’s compliance rate to be very satisfactory,” said spokesperson Charlotte MacLeod.
Push for standardized tracking
Public Services and Procurement Canada (PSPC), which manages the government’s office portfolio, has been tasked with developing a standardized attendance-tracking system across departments. Associate assistant deputy minister Nathalie Bertrand said PSPC is collaborating with Shared Services Canada on potential technological solutions.
“We truly believe that technology is going to be the piece that helps drive this forward,” Bertrand told MPs earlier this year, adding that several systems are being evaluated, with a final proposal expected by spring 2026.
The absence of reliable data has broader implications for government planning. PSPC has acknowledged that it cannot accurately assess how much of its office space is actually in use, complicating efforts to downsize federal real estate holdings and repurpose properties for housing.
Labour relations tension mounts
Public service unions have strongly opposed what they describe as creeping surveillance under the guise of compliance. Nathan Prier, president of the Canadian Association of Professional Employees, called the current approach “an unprecedented employee surveillance system” that wastes management resources.
“Federal workers are still waiting for an explanation of why workers can’t work remotely if they so choose,” he said. “Instead, they’re being told their privacy rights are being violated. This reads as a management flex over workers who are already getting pretty fed up with being mandated into inefficiency.”
Prier warned that the policy risks driving talent away from the federal service: “The best and the brightest are packing up and looking for work elsewhere. The government’s going to have to live with the consequences of treating workers like children.”
Balancing compliance and culture
For HR professionals across the federal system, the tension between enforcing policy and preserving morale is palpable. The Treasury Board’s own guidance suggests a graduated discipline process for those who deliberately refuse to comply — from verbal warnings to termination — but instructs managers to consider individual circumstances and accommodation obligations.
Experts say the situation reflects a deeper culture challenge. “The hybrid work debate is not just about attendance,” said one senior HR advisor in Ottawa. “It’s about trust, engagement, and what the future federal workplace should actually look like.”
As the government continues to refine its data systems, the real test may not be compliance itself but whether rigid mandates undermine the flexibility and autonomy that many employees have come to value since the pandemic.
