Online forums for civil servants have exploded in recent weeks with comments about the prospect of a return to offices, with officials comparing notes on the hybrid work plans each department plans to adopt. A comment by a Health Canada manager urging employees to return to the office, in part to give employees at a nearby Subway restaurant more hours, has exploded into a flurry of sarcastic memes online. A comment by a Health Canada manager urging employees to return to the office, in part, so workers at a local Subway restaurant can get more hours has sparked an explosion of memes in online discussions among federal workers. (Screenshot from Federal Public Service of Canada on Reddit) Public service unions say while some employees want to return to work in government offices or are happy with a hybrid arrangement, the majority want to continue working from home as Canada experiences a seventh wave of COVID-19. “We’ve done studies of our members that show 60 percent of our members would prefer to stay in a work-from-home situation, 25 percent would like to do a hybrid, and 10 percent would like to go back to full-time office,” said Jennifer Carr, president of the Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada (PIPSC), which represents about 70,000 workers, including scientists and computer specialists.
The Union wants remote work to be included in collective agreements
Carr said the union has been inundated with messages from concerned members. “I’d say our inbox now is 90 percent about going back to the office, how people are not comfortable, how they have questions about coverage requirements, about the need and the need to come into the office when they can work in the safety of their home and to do the job efficiently.” WATCHES | The chairman of the Treasury Department on the return of federal employees to work:
Finance Minister Mona Fortier on the future of work in the public service
Treasury chairwoman Mona Fortier explains the steps the government is taking to adopt a hybrid work environment where many employees will work part-time from offices and part-time from home. Greg Phillips, president of the Canadian Association of Professional Employees (CAPE), which called for the back-to-office suspension, said his members have long favored hybrid work. They feel that returning to the office is being rushed and that their concerns are not being addressed, he said. CAPE has more than 20,000 members, including economists, translators, Library of Parliament employees and civilian members of the RCMP. “In general, people who don’t want to go back to the office have been pretty vocal about that,” Phillips said. “They haven’t even addressed … in many cases, housing needs.” The Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC) – the largest federal government union, with nearly 230,000 members – is calling on the government to be flexible about bringing workers back to the office and addressing their concerns. “We know that most of our members are still working remotely, and many want to continue to have that flexibility,” the union said in a statement. “Teleworking has become part of many workers’ everyday lives and we will continue to fight to incorporate it into our collective agreements during this round of negotiations with the Treasury and the services.”
“Hybrid work is here to stay”: Treasury
In an interview with CBC News, Treasury chairwoman Mona Fortier said hybrid work is the future of the federal public service. He said it’s up to each department or organization to figure out how to make it work while keeping employees safe and getting the job done. “Hybrid work is here to stay,” Fortier said. “So we have to really understand that hybrid work is going to be part of how we deliver programs and services to Canadians. I know a lot of people think that COVID is gone, but we’re still in a COVID space.” The latest debate about where civil servants should work was sparked by a June 29 memo by Privy Council official Janice Charette urging civil service managers to develop hybrid working models to meet the operational demands of their departments . “Now is the time to test new models with a view to full implementation in the fall, subject to public health conditions,” he wrote. Charette said hybrid working models offer “significant opportunities” such as a more nationally distributed workforce and greater flexibility for employees, while bringing people back together in an office has benefits such as improved idea generation, knowledge transfer and building a strong culture of public service.
Different plans for different federal departments
That memo prompted managers to begin ramping up plans for employees to begin returning to government offices after Labor Day and to contact employees to formalize how many days they would have to work from the office. Union leaders say the result has been a patchwork with some departments telling employees to return to the office several days a week, while others are more flexible. They say the wide range of policies also results in some departments trying to seek the best and brightest talent from other departments, offering more flexibility to work from home and employees seeking transfers to departments more open to working from home. Still others are considering leaving the federal civil service, rather than returning to government offices. In online forums like the Federal Public Service of Canada’s Reddit, civil servants compare information about plans to return to the office. While a handful support the move, many are highly critical of the plan to bring workers back to the office, how it is being rolled out or who is chosen to return to the office. Greg Phillips, president of the Canadian Association of Professional Employees, says members of his union have long favored hybrid work, but think the current back-to-the-office plan is too hasty. (Ashley Burke/CBC) In some cases, commenters reported being told to return to the office only to spend time in video conference meetings. “Commuting an hour a day to not see anyone I work with and communicating almost exclusively through groups and email (MS) is completely pointless,” wrote one. “There’s the email from our ESDC DM — expected in the office at least a few times,” wrote another. “Excuse me while I scream obscenities into space.” Some complained that their department announced a plan – only to change it. “We were asked to sign telecommuting agreements where full-time telecommuting was one of the options,” said one commenter who said they worked at the Justice Department. “And now, all of a sudden, full-time telecommuting is off the table and it’s at least two days in the office.”
The risk of contracting COVID-19 is a concern for some
“We were pretty much told we wouldn’t be forced back if we didn’t want to,” responded one commenter who said they worked for Statistics Canada. “Now at least two days from September 12.” For others, the concern is the risk of contracting COVID-19 from a colleague or working conditions in a government office. Leaders like Phillips say comments on forums like Reddit are in line with what they’re hearing from their members. “You see all kinds of government officials comparing notes between what one department is doing and what the other department is doing and it creates massive confusion.”
