Return-to-office mandates: ‘who’s going to police it?’

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

Several of Canada’s largest employers, including major banks and provincial governments, now require employees to return at least four days a week, with private sector companies such as Rogers and Amazon following suit. That momentum is reflected in a 2025 Cisco survey, which found that 68 per cent of Canadian employers have implemented a return-to-office (RTO) policy.

Canadian workers, however, still prefer flexible work, with 56 per cent of job seekers selecting hybrid arrangements and only 14% choosing in-office, a recent survey from Robert Half found.

A new challenge for HR leaders

For HR leaders, a new challenge has emerged, according to Cheryl Kerrigan, Chief People Officer at BlueCat. “Who’s going to police it?” says Kerrigan. “I can't imagine having a member of my team checking access codes and going around with a clipboard and checking people off.”

That’s the reality for many HR professionals, according to Janice Clark, a senior HR director and organizational effectiveness consultant, who has seen HR teams increasingly pulled into monitoring office attendance.

“More and more I’m seeing HR having to take the role of being the bad guy,” says Clark. “We’ve worked really hard to be seen as business partners, and now they’re seen as the agent of the employer trying to monitor all that.”

Clark says that dynamic leaves HR leaders caught between senior leadership’s mandates and employees’ expectations for flexibility.

Why strict RTO enforcement may backfire

Whether through badge swipes, desk bookings, or Wi-Fi tracking, Lynn Conway, Senior Business Partner, People Operations, Toronto Blue Jays, says close monitoring can send the wrong message to employees.

“When employees feel like they’re being monitored, they don’t respond well to that,” says Conway. “It can discourage high performers and high-potential employees from wanting to stick around.”

Dr. Laura Hambley Lovett, founder of Canada Career Counselling and adjunct professor of organizational psychology at the University of Calgary, says many organizations still equate time in the office with higher productivity, which isn’t always the case.

“When people are trusted, they tend to produce more. You’re always going to have low performers, but those people need to be managed regardless of where they’re working,” she says. “Someone can slack off just as easily from a cubicle as they can from their couch.”

Kerrigan believes that the growing focus on attendance can pull HR leaders away from building culture, enabling leaders, and helping employees succeed.

How HR leaders are finding the right balance

At BlueCat, Kerrigan says a hybrid system determined on a team-by-team basis, without monitoring, has helped preserve trust while giving employees the flexibility to manage their work.

“We hire adults. We hire people to be knowledge workers, and that feels very much like we're back in elementary school or high school, where you get attendance taken,” she says.

“When you treat adults like they are children, guess what type of behaviour they will start to exhibit?”

But Conway says the solution isn’t as simple as abandoning RTO policies altogether or defaulting to hybrid arrangements simply because they’re popular.

“There isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution,” she says. “Every company needs to step back, look at its workforce and what it’s trying to achieve, and design a more customized approach.”

Enforcing RTO: blanket mandates or flexibility?

Instead of blanket mandates, Clark says HR leaders should work with senior management to determine which arrangements make the most sense for each position.

“You have to look at the role first,” she says. “Does the job support remote or hybrid work? And then look at whether the employee has the competencies to succeed in that arrangement.”

Kerrigan says HR leaders need to ask management how far they’re willing to go to enforce attendance policies. If they’re unwilling to discipline employees who don’t comply, she says the policy could lose credibility.

“Are we actually going to terminate our top developer if she doesn't come into the office three days a week?” Kerrigan says.

If they’re willing to take disciplinary action, Clark says HR is there to equip and support managers to have those conversations, but not to do it for them.

Ultimately, the debate isn’t just about where employees sit, but how organizations balance trust, culture, and performance. For many HR leaders, that means helping to shape workplace policies that support flexibility without turning the function into the attendance police.