Your Stories

My team is spread across different regions, such as Montreal, Toronto, New Brunswick, Ottawa, and Gatineau. Unfortunately, this geographical spread means that we cannot all work together physically in the same office. Because of this, we have to use tools like Microsoft Teams and wear headsets to be able to work effectively from home.

In addition, we never get together with our team in person. Our work consists mainly of reviewing projects for approval, without requiring direct interaction with Canadians. However, some of my employees are in remote areas or in another office and are required to physically travel to work, even though they are the only members of their team in this situation.

I wonder what added value there is in forcing these employees to come and work in the office. During the pandemic, we were encouraged to hire employees from the regions, but now Treasury Board has decided to call us all back to the office without specifically assessing the realities of our teams. We now have to deal with three days of in-person work, while still being isolated. Times are tough for all of us, and we are hearing conflicting messages about the economy, the environment, and work-life balance from our senior leaders. We are in favour of some teams returning to in-person work, if necessary, but we feel that a one-size-fits-all approach is not justified in our specific situation.

Although I could appreciate and sympathize with employees with younger children, their inability to work during the pandemic was taxing on single employees like me without children as the overflow of work weighed heavy on employees in similar status. Being alone, unable to visit family took its toll on my mental health, and to fill a void and reduce the loneliness, I purchased a furry friend and the bond for both of us is strong. He suffers from anxiety when I go in the office and so do I.

That said, I found a caregiver willing to care for him the two days I need to be in the office. She is 71, and following the recent announcement, she confirmed that three days a week is too much for her. Come September, I will need to do two half-days, meaning I will be going in the office four times a week. This is very disruptive on my mental health, my schedule, and I fail to understand the value to Canadians. In fact, these three days a week to increase collaboration will also increase gas emissions, increase GC footprint and this goes completely against what the Government announced it would do in the first place.I often hear that public servants are more productive at home, and I couldn’t agree more. When I am asked to work overtime due to the nature of the work that I do, I never have an issue when I am home, but when I am asked to stay in the office later, I am very reluctant to do so as I have to account for the commute and for my furry friend at home.

When we were required to work from home, we adapted and delivered. Our lives have changed, and we all got a taste of a better work/life balance. Now, our employer for political reasons is asking us to forget about their commitment to protecting the environment, their commitment to mental health and work/life balance, and without any consultations is asking us to be present three days a week to increase collaboration with colleagues. We have the tools from home to collaborate efficiently when required, without additional costs and without unnecessary interruptions that we are faced with too often in the course of a day at the office.

Finally, a message to the people we serve, our fellow Canadians, I would like to share that public servants who lacked ethics at work in the past will likely continue to do so whether they are working from home or in an office space. It is absolutely futile to think that public servants are less productive at home and our employer should dedicate resources to evaluate productivity in the first place as opposed to forcing public servants to return to office space that could be better used to house fellow Canadians and immigrants that are living in the streets. If government office spaces would be turned into affordable housing, specifically those in downtown Ottawa, the downtown core would live again and not just between 8am to 4pm but evenings and weekends as well. Now that makes too much sense!

As I have school-age children, teleworking allows me to be involved in their academic development, as I can welcome them back from school and spend quality time on their homework. Returning to the office would add extra family stress due to the lack of time. I live 90 km away from my workplace. I also volunteer once a week with the elderly after my workday. If I have to go back to the office three days a week, I will have to stop volunteering due to lack of time.

Going to the office just creates a lot of frustration due to lack of consistency and would have no positive impact on the quality of my work.

From an environmental perspective, this unnecessarily increases carbon emissions per Canadian citizen and increases traffic on the roads.

As we are now both parents in the office two days a week, it is much more complicated. Because of reduced childcare hours, we cannot work the same days in the office. It is impossible to find another daycare, there are simply no spaces. When the children are sick, which happens often with three children, especially during the winter months, we are asked to make up the days we have missed in the office, even if we were still productive while working from home.

I am currently hesitating to apply for a position that would be a promotion, because at least this way I can manage my family situation. What a step in the wrong direction! Also, as my husband is a manager, I have to adjust to his two days in the office, so I often find myself in the office on Fridays… alone… taking meetings by Teams, when I could have done it just as well from home.

What is the point of coming to work at the office if I am the only one in my team, alone on an empty floor. Now we are back in traffic, wasting an hour, two hours of our lives driving, since we had to give up taking the bus for the reasons mentioned above. It just makes me think of the song L’Amérique pleure by Les Cowboys fringants: we take turns honking the horn, in such a hurry to get nowhere.

I used to work in Montreal and would spend about 15 hours a week on the road. During the pandemic, I worked from home, and everything was going well. Since returning to the office, I work alone in the office all day, since I am the only employee in my region.

I finish my days in the office exhausted and demotivated! I have also stopped volunteering with a non-profit organization for animals because I no longer have time to do so.

Teleworking was working very well for those in regional offices before the Treasury Board’s decision! After the problems I experienced with Phoenix, this is another reason that makes me wonder why I am still a public servant.

My manager and colleagues are all in different provinces in Canada. It is impossible for us to meet as a team. So, there was no added value in going to the office because I am always on my own.

I have three children at home, and I have to be there for the beginning and end of the school day, since I am home alone with the children most of the time. When I went back to work, my schedule became very demanding, as I have to travel to the office several times a week. My work-life balance has deteriorated.

In addition, when I go into the office, I do not always have a workspace. I waste time trying to find one. When I do find one, I often do not have a monitor, so I am not very productive, because I work with several Excel files, and it is a pain to look for information on a small notebook screen. Sometimes I do not even have a power socket for my computer, or the internet does not work and there is not much I can do.

As an employee dealing with multiple disabilities, I try to avoid stress as much as possible as it is the main trigger for both of my conditions (Multiple Sclerosis and Irritable Bowel Syndrome). I have never requested accommodations. It wasn’t until the pandemic that I even realized how much time and energy I put into managing my disabilities to commute to and be present in the office or how much stress it causes me.

My work is done remotely. My entire team and clients are in the Maritimes, while I am physically in Gatineau. There is no reason for me to be in the office in Ottawa, yet blind adherence to the employer’s policy forces me to do so twice a week (soon to be three times a week). If I had a family doctor (I’ve lived in Quebec 8+ years and I’m still waiting), I would get a disability passport and be done with the unnecessary stress the employer’s blanket policy for hybrid work causes me.

It is hard to believe the employer cares about my disabilities given the absurdity of the situation. It’s hurtful that they value me potentially spending money at businesses in the downtown core of a city I do not even live in over my health and wellbeing.

I work in a regional office for my department. I have absolutely no team members or internal clients in my regional office. It makes absolutely no sense to have to go into the office when I’m doing the exact same thing that I’ll be doing at home.
During the last fiscal year, I was fully remote as there were capacity issues in my office. I’ve received very positive feedback during my PMA and received succeeded as my rating. Therefore, working from home is clearly not having an issue in completing my work. In fact, I feel like I’m more productive when working from home. I can understand if someone is asked to come in due to performance issues, but clearly that is not the case in my scenario.

I suffer from a disability which affects my mobility on certain days (flareups). The return-to-office mandate adds unnecessary difficulty to my life given that I would be doing the exact same thing in the office that I do at home. I am planning to file a duty to accommodate due to my condition. I now have to spend a huge amount of time filing this accommodation request. The employer will also have to spend time reviewing this request. Shouldn’t our focus be on the work itself and not where we work?
The return-to-office mandate makes absolutely no sense in my scenario. It’s disrespectful that the employer has not provided any evidence whatsoever to support its decision and that it did not even collaborate with the unions on this issue as it promised to do so. Sometimes it feels like we are being employed by a dictatorship.

When we told to work from home in 2020, it was a hard adjustment. However, after 4 months, I was settled in and working well with it. I was less stressed and able to manage my migraines and anxiety much better. My 78-year-old mother (who is not from Ottawa) lives next door to me, so I was able to check in on her and when she was diagnosed with breast cancer and I was able to bring her to her appointments without having to spend additional time away from work in driving home from the office and back.

I suffered from an anxiety attack (work stress burn-out) in 2017, and ever since then, I haven’t been able to deal with stress like I did before that. Due to my migraines, the fluorescent lights in the office aggravate it as well. I’ve already been accommodated with anti-glare screens for the computer screens and am grateful, but now that the offices are “open concept”, I can no longer find a closed office and turn off the lights.

Working from home has enabled me to manage these personal health issues. From a work perspective, I don’t have many meetings in the financial role that I am in now. My clients are fellow financial people. With working from home, to get something completed by EOD or COB I can put in that extra time without stressing about having to get home by a certain time. I have no problems with reaching out and connecting with others in the workplace. I find that Teams is a wonderful invention and makes it so easy to do that. I would waste time in going to another floor to talk to a colleague with only to find that they were out of the office or gone elsewhere in the building.

I just want to do my job in peace and not have to the corporate games being played in the office.

As a female, I have struggled with extremely difficult (painful) monthly cycles. In the past, it was extremely difficult to report to the office on these days due to extreme pain, nausea, sensitivity to light/sound/smells, and more. I was afraid to take time off work to deal with this issue, and at one point was threatened by a manager and required to present a doctor’s note. While I understood why a doctor’s note was requested, it was nonetheless a humiliating and de-humanizing experience. Working from home has allowed me to manage my symptoms without disrupting my work too much.

Secondly, I have experienced extreme insomnia in the past. Working from home, I was able to finally solve my insomnia and manage sleep and stress levels to a functional level. I am no longer struggling with early bedtime and wake-up times in order to commute to the office. I am able to nap during breaks if and when necessary, making me a much more productive employee.

Finally, working from home allows me to concentrate properly. I would describe myself as an introvert and noise sensitive. In the office, there are always colleagues who do not mute their devices, meaning that I am repeatedly exposed to other people’s notifications (e.g. Teams, error notifications, text messages, etc.) sounding. Each time a notification goes off, my concentration is broken, and the anticipation of the next disturbance in between creates stress and divided attention. For this reason alone, I find working in the office a very real and daily struggle. Having worked with some difficult personalities, I (and some colleagues I have spoken to) have noticed that my working relationship improved with certain individuals when there was some distance between us. Being in the office with colleagues daily is not always beneficial for working relationships.

I am the sole caregiver for my father (who will be 87 in September) who lives with me. During Covid, we all heard the horror stories in the old-age homes. My father is well, but can get confused, so I appreciate the flexibility to work from home.

Also, all rural bus services and express services in Orleans have been cancelled. I depend on a ride with a neighbour to get to work, so I adjust to her schedule. She suffers with anxiety, so prior to Covid, she was working in-office two days a week, so I will just be able to go in two days a week. She is upset with the new arrangements since it hinders her chances for advancement.

The current hybrid model does not discriminate. People with anxiety had opportunities open to them that they will no longer have.

I have an autoimmune condition developed during 2020-2021. This causes extreme itching where I swell up and need ice packs or I scratch through my skin. It’s humiliating and gross to be in an open office where people who don’t know me need an explanation.

In addition, we don’t have dedicated office space. We are told to go, pay for parking (or in my case, thanks to LRT, a two-hour bus ride for a 30 min drive), and hope to find a spot with a monitor, or else go home and try again the next day. I have no time for exercise, as my autoimmune condition requires exercise to balance, and I can’t afford parking anymore thanks to the world being so expensive. The two-hour each-way bus isn’t feasible with a family.

For years, we have worked in a building with bed bugs and bats.

I’m so tired and embarrassed. I shouldn’t have to explain I don’t have a communicable disease, but I do. Every day.

In May 2021, we sold our house and moved back to our community. After over a year of hardship and mental strain from provincial lockdowns, we needed to be closer to home. We are a younger couple with two kids (2 and 3), 115km away from the office.

I was hired during the pandemic with no mention of return to work in the next year or two, and the return being portrayed as coming in to a team meeting every so often, not a mandatory number of days.

Three days a week has just got us overwhelmed with stress. We take the highway 148 in QC and it is not the best-cleared highway in the winter, especially with how early we need to leave to juggle work and kids. We also have two dogs, and an 11-hour workday is too long for them. We need to ask someone to come let them out in the afternoon so they can relieve themselves.

It is not right for kids to be away from their parents when they don’t have to be. Whoever determined that 125km one way is the norm did not do the travelling themselves. No one forced us to have kids and move away from the city, but when hired, we were told we’d be safe at home. Where’s our safety now? I’ve had to stop multiple times on my way up in the morning because I was falling asleep on the wheel.

We’ve thought about multiple scenarios. Do we need to sell and move back to the city? Can we even afford it? What about the daycare shortage, then what? We’d be leaving our families behind and our small community. I’ve tried to look for positions in Renfrew, Petawawa, Pembroke, Campbell’s Bay just to cut out the travelling.

If we were a couple, no kids, no pets, it would be easier to navigate the new mandate, but the mandate is not tailored to individual scenarios. Just writing this blurb has got emotions running wild and eyes tearing up.

Please send help.

Sincerely,
A Stressed Mom

My spouse works for a large national company. He was offered an opportunity to participate in a project which required him to move temporarily to another province for the period of the tasking, which was more than 1 year. Pre-COVID, this would have required me take an unpaid leave of absence and to also put my career on hold, but thanks to COVID, I showed, like many other dedicated and professional federal public servants, that I could do my non-public facing job remotely for two years without any loss to productivity or negative impact to the organization. In fact, I had done my job so well, including temporarily taking on even more senior responsibilities during this period, that I received exemplary performance appraisals and won a director-general level equivalent merit award for my efforts.

However, when I asked for the opportunity to continue to work remotely, my newly hired immediate manager denied my request because they felt I did not warrant an exception. My manager therefore left me the choice to either be in the office two days a week, living separately from my spouse with the require to finance two households to do so, or to go on leave without pay. I was eventually successful obtaining an exemption in part because I was able to show I had previously socialized my situation with my prior chain of command, and they were comfortable with my work ethic and performance. However, I was told an exception would not be granted in the future for a case such as mine, with the unspoken implication not to bother asking for one. That contradicts Ms. Anand’s assertion that the exemption process is open, accessible and equitable to all employees: it only is if you are willing to fight to be heard, possibly jeopardizing your career by being labelled a trouble-maker while you advocate for proper consideration.

What makes this even worse is that I suffer from substantial hearing loss, so finding another job at the senior level I’ve worked so hard to achieve is that much more difficult for someone like me. Despite what people assert publicly, there is a general tendency to avoid hiring those of us with such challenges, so we often feel the need to hide our “deficiencies” in order to be properly considered on our merit.

It is possible to do many jobs entirely remotely, even on a permanent basis, and my job and performance experience is proof positive of that. Enforcing a mandatory in-office policy, regardless of the number of days in-office, has a disproportionate impact on women and their ability to advance their careers while balancing their familial obligations, when situations such as mine occur, because we are the ones who usually are required to sacrifice to support our families and spouses. It is my hope the federal government will reconsider their position on this backward-facing policy which disproportionately impacts women and help lead Canadians and Canadian businesses firmly into the future by making in-office presence optional for non-public facing positions.

As a mother of two children still at home under the age of 11, with a spouse who works away from home for weeks upon weeks at a time, this causes extreme stress. Just another day to plan to go to the office and disrupt my working hours means less productivity at the end of the day.I suffer emotionally because of past domestic violence issues, and no matter how hard I try I am so distracted by everyone and everything around me at the office now, especially when in open spaces surrounded by people I barely know. This make is extremely hard to feel as productive and efficient as I do at home where I am 100% comfortable. At the office, which floor am I going to? Where am I seated? Who is seated next to me? Do I know them/trust them? Will I have to sit at a lunch table again because there are no desks? Is my back against a wall or am I surrounded by people?

Even the adjustment of two days at the office has disrupted me so emotionally that I still find myself very disengaged and exhausted at times, so I do nothing at home but go to bed. It’s disruptive and very unfair to my children, but I need to work, and I love my job! It’s exhausting and the three-day-a-week return just makes this feel like a nightmare.

While 100% WFH, I have consistently been given succeeded + as a performance review, been given additional work, and have been given acting opportunities. The logic that we work better in office, collaborate more and are more productive makes absolutely zero sense to me, as remote work has been my government career to date. I have been working hard, pushing out results, and have never been happier.My team is remote and not in the NCR, so there is no meaningful purpose for me to be in an office. The announcement for three days starting in September has completely demotivated me. I dread my in-office days, I am less productive while in office due to a foreign desk set up each time, improper equipment, and no primary setup.

I do not understand how this is beneficial to the government or the Canadian people. I am a taxpayer too and visually see the wasted money on old, decrepit office buildings that this government is pumping millions of dollars in to renovate, just to dispose of at some point in the near future. Meanwhile, I am more than happy to pay my own utility bills, no tax credit needed, no taxpayer dollars required. Let’s modernize, get with the times, and push for work from home that makes sense. Not every position can be done effectively from home, but many, many positions can be done better remotely and promote qualified talent to work from any city in our country.

When we were asked to go back two days a week, I was forced to put my kids into before-school care (EDP). When you signed up, they had a minimum requirement of 3 days a week. This meant I was paying for 3 days of care when I only needed 2. The cost, plus additional fuel costs (I live an hour outside of the NCR), plus parking ate into the entirety of the net amount of my raise that I got because of my promotion.

This year, they have just made the MINIMUM days you can register for EDP ALL FIVE DAYS. I would be forced to pay for care that I don’t need. This time, I’m not getting a raise or promotion to coincide with this $400/month increase. Coupled with inflation and increased mortgage rates, we are being forced into financial distress. The only other alternative is that I get the kids onto the bus and work until 6:00 pm. I wouldn’t be home until 7:15 and would see my kids for 15 minutes before they go to bed.

Two whole days of my life every single week would be completely consumed with work + commute time. That is an atrocity and waste of life. I would be missing out on my family and my kids lives and applying extra burden on my husband and strain on my marriage.

That option is bleak, but the alternative is to pay for the three days of unneeded childcare for two children and risk defaulting on my mortgage and losing our home that we built and designed on our own.

I don’t know what to do.

I live in Toronto and was hired in 2022 for a position based in Ottawa. When TBS released their first two-day prescribed presence in the office, my manager expected that I would right away move to Ottawa and leave my Toronto life behind in a second. At this point, I was still hired as a term employee, so I was reluctant to make that move with no guarantee of employment past the end of my term contract.
I have the intention to move to Ottawa, though I will only get to spend time with my partner for a couple hours on the Sunday afternoon because of the nature of his work. I will not have equal opportunity to make the life for myself that I am able and wish to live because of the significant financial burden of traveling between the two cities each week as well as paying rent and associated costs in those two cities.

I have also recently been diagnosed with a chronic medical condition. With my health care support system in Toronto, moving to another city without my partner has been increasing my stress as I have less ability to access my needed healthcare services while also having to navigate it solely on my own from a different city.

This mandate has caused a significant amount of stress in my life even before it has been implemented, as I am concerned that I will not have my accommodation recognized which will result in having to pick between my job and income and being resulting in me not seeing my common-law partner for a year or quitting my job and losing my income.

I know that I was doing more productive work during the pandemic as I was consistently being told this from management, seeing it on my performance reviews, and offered a long-term acting in my very team. If that is not proof of employees being able to work hard(er) and better from home, I don’t know what TBS would need to see?

There are almost no meeting rooms ever available to book. So, what are we left with, sitting at our tiny desks in the open on a Teams meeting with people in the building, on the same floor as me, all because there are no available rooms for our meeting?

I for one refuse to spend my hard-earned money in downtown Ottawa while being forced back into a building that I have no purpose being in. I will not be a government bailout, I’m too busy working hard for Canadians and trying to get Canadians value for their money. I support my local businesses. Downtown is Ottawa’s responsibility, not mine or the feds.

As a mother dealing with the extra challenges of caring for children with special needs, I am beginning to question my decision to accept this position with the Government of Canada. At the time I received my letter of offer, the position was two days in the office or 40% of your time. This was the main appeal for me accepting the position, the main reason I decided to leave a higher paying position in the private sector!