Natural Resources Canada starts tracking in-office attendance

Natural Resources Canada (NRCan) has launched a pilot project to track whether federal public servants are meeting in‑office attendance requirements, as the federal government moves to more strictly enforce its hybrid work directive.

In a statement reported by the Ottawa Citizen, NRCan spokesperson Marie Martin said the initiative is “intended to strengthen reporting practices by providing appropriate tools and information to address potential non‑compliance and ensure consistent in‑office expectations for all employees.”

The project uses existing information technology systems to monitor where employees are signing in and is designed to support NRCan’s transition to a new Treasury Board directive that significantly increases required on‑site presence.

Under that directive, public servants will be required to work in the office at least four days a week starting in July, while executives will be required to attend in person five days a week beginning in May. NRCan has relied on high‑level, aggregated office attendance statistics to guide senior management “since 2024,” according to Martin.

The department will now join others in “moving towards using more detailed disaggregated data drawn from existing IP login information in accordance with Canada’s Privacy Act.” The move comes as federal departments seek to tighten oversight of hybrid work following uneven compliance with earlier return‑to‑office rules.

The federal government failed to meet its target when it came to the return-to-office policy in the first month of the full implementation of the rule, according to a previous report.

Other departments already using IP data to track attendance

NRCan is not the first federal department to monitor in‑office presence using digital tools. Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) and Employment and Social Development Canada (ESDC) have already put in place similar systems, the Ottawa Citizen reported.

IRCC initially tested IP‑based monitoring as a pilot but has operated the programme on a permanent basis since January. The system “uses Internet Protocol (IP) login information from IRCC buildings and offices to monitor in‑office attendance. The program does not monitor IP addresses from other locations, such as employees’ homes or Public Service and Procurement Canada (PSPC) GC Coworking sites,” IRCC spokesperson Jeffrey MacDonald said in a statement.

MacDonald said the data allows managers to “address cases of non‑compliance and support a fair work environment.” The approach relies on network sign‑in records from federal buildings, but explicitly excludes remote locations such as employees’ homes and government coworking facilities.

ESDC has issued weekly aggregated reports on on‑site attendance since 2024. In 2025, it began examining individual login data to enforce its in‑office directive. According to spokesperson Samuelle Carbonneau, the department used “two existing sources of information — IT login data from office locations, and work arrangement and leave information from the department’s main human resources platform used by staff and supervisors” to produce a Low Onsite Connectivity Report in July 2025, based on June 2025 data.

That report showed that 99.5% of employees were compliant with in‑office requirements, Carbonneau said. The Ottawa Citizen also reported that when the government first ordered a three‑days‑a‑week return to the office in 2024, more than 25% of ESDC employees failed to comply, based on data released under access‑to‑information. That early compliance gap has helped drive the move towards more formal verification mechanisms across departments.

Federal hybrid directive sets framework for prescribed presence

The tightening of departmental monitoring follows the federal government’s formal direction on prescribed presence in the workplace for the core public administration. That direction, issued by the Treasury Board, requires deputy heads to implement a minimum requirement of three days per week in the workplace for all public servants, or alternatively a minimum of 60% of employees’ regular schedule on a weekly or monthly basis.

Workplaces “vary from one organization to the other,” the directive notes, instructing deputy heads to adapt requirements to their operational needs while maintaining overall consistency. Departments that had not previously implemented the three‑day minimum were told to fully implement the requirement no later than Sept. 9, 2024. The direction applies to all core public administration employees, including indeterminate, full‑time, part‑time, term staff, students and casual workers.

The government says the objectives of the direction are to deliver services to Canadians and “strengthen their confidence in the public service,” establish a consistent approach to hybrid work “to ensure fairness across the public service,” support nationwide recruitment of top talent, and align hybrid practices with diversity, inclusion and accessibility goals. It also links the policy to “modernising our business models” and building a “culture of excellence” in the public service.

Verification, compliance and defined exceptions

The directive places clear responsibility on deputy heads for establishing systems to verify attendance. “Deputy heads assume responsibility for implementing verification regimes and for maintaining human resources data for their department or agency,” it states.

On‑site presence can be measured through turnstile data, existing attendance reports and IP login data, which may be used to collect aggregated departmental data. Departmental ADM‑level compliance and coherence committees are expected to monitor data trends and ensure consistency in decisions on exceptions related to prescribed presence.

While the directive affirms the employer’s “exclusive management right to designate the location of work and to require employees to report to their designated workplace,” it also sets conditions on how compliance should be pursued. Managers are instructed to discuss potential barriers with employees before implementation, consider the duty to accommodate and consult labour relations teams when using administrative measures to address non‑compliance.

The directive creates formal exceptions at deputy head and assistant deputy minister levels, including for some pre‑existing business models, employees hired to work remotely before 16 March 2020, certain Indigenous public servants, and staff working 125 kilometres or more from their designated worksite.

As more organizations call staff back to the office, HR leaders warn that strict attendance enforcement could erode employee trust, morale, and productivity, according to a previous report.

Here are a list of employers in Toronto that are requiring workers to be in the office at least three days each week:

Here are the ones requiring at least four in-office days each week from workers:

And here are the employers requiring a full-time return-to-office: