‘Treated like a child’: Some public servants being graded on in-office attendance
Some federal public servants are being formally assessed on whether they comply with return-to-office requirements, including one case in which an otherwise strong employee received a lower overall performance rating after failing an office-attendance objective.
The Hill Times spoke to multiple public servants on condition of anonymity who described office-attendance requirements appearing in formal performance agreements, or affecting how staff are assessed at work.
“It makes me feel like I’m being treated like a child [...] It makes me less than enthusiastic about the rest of my work," said a public servant at Employment and Social Development Canada (ESDC), who also said an office-attendance objective appeared in their 2026–27 performance agreement for the first time.
Johanne Fillion, a spokesperson for the Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada (PIPSC), said the union has confirmed examples of return-to-office requirements appearing in employee performance reviews in six departments and agencies: ESDC, Environment and Climate Change Canada, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, National Defence, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, and Shared Services Canada.
The Hill Times separately found an example at the Canada Border Services Agency, which was not among the six organizations identified by PIPSC.
“PIPSC’s position is that performance evaluations should be related to the work you perform, not where you work,” Fillion said.
Federal performance agreements set out employees’ work objectives and competencies, and are used in their formal performance assessments. Those assessments can affect a public servant’s overall rating and subsequent performance-management decisions, and even career opportunities.
The federal government’s current direction on in-office attendance, which took effect July 6, requires core public administration staff to work onsite at least four days per week, although deputy heads can stagger implementation where organizations need additional office space.
The government first standardized onsite attendance in 2023, requiring eligible employees to work in the office two or three days a week, before increasing that to three days in September 2024, and four days this past July.
One manager's account
The case involving the lower performance rating was described by a manager, who was granted anonymity by The Hill Times because of concerns about being identified within their department.
During the 2023–24 performance cycle, the manager said a public servant who otherwise had a strong year failed an objective requiring them to meet the government’s prescribed level of office attendance.
The manager said the employee met every other work objective and competency that year, but failing the office-attendance objective lowered that person's overall performance rating, indicating they had not fully met the expectations set out in their performance agreement.
The manager also provided The Hill Times with wording from written guidance received by managers through assistant deputy ministers’ offices. In practical terms, the guidance made regular office attendance a formal work objective, and required employees and managers to meet the prescribed attendance requirement.
The manager did not dispute management’s ability to enforce onsite requirements, but argued that attendance should be dealt with separately from the process used to assess how well public servants perform their work.
“A performance appraisal is meant to be about how well someone does their job,” the manager said.
According to the manager, failing a work objective automatically opens a performance improvement plan in the federal performance-management system, although a manager can initially decide not to proceed with one.
The manager said performance improvement plans remain visible in the system, and can deter future opportunities because managers routinely review employees’ previous performance assessments. If a civil servant continues to not meet expectations while on a performance improvement plan, the manager said consequences can range from being denied their next scheduled pay increase to termination.
The Hill Times contacted the manager’s department with general questions about how onsite-attendance requirements are handled in performance agreements. The department said managers can include onsite expectations in individual work objectives, but there is no department-wide requirement to do so.
From the employee side
The ESDC employee quoted earlier told The Hill Times that the office-attendance objective appeared shortly after their program moved to four days of required onsite work in August.
The employee—who was granted anonymity to discuss internal performance-management practices and is using they/them pronouns to protect their identity—said their manager stopped at the new section during their performance discussion and read it aloud. They said that stood out because, in roughly eight years in the federal public service, they could not remember a manager ever singling out a performance objective that way.
The wording requires staff to work onsite according to their assigned schedule, alongside requirements around the use of office space and booking workspaces.
“The [performance agreement] is supposed to be a measure of your success with the employer every year,” the employee said. “Including my presence or my adherence to the return-to-office mandate as an item does tell me that that mandate is really important to the employer.”
They said no specific consequence had been explained if they failed to meet the attendance objective, but they still object to attendance becoming part of the assessment itself.
ESDC spokesperson Samuelle Carbonneau said the department has not made onsite attendance a department-wide performance commitment for 2026–27 or directed managers across the department to include attendance requirements as performance objectives or indicators. Carbonneau added that managers remain responsible for addressing employees who do not comply with workplace-presence requirements.
Separately, a Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) employee provided The Hill Times with a screenshot of their performance agreement showing the agency’s Hybrid Work Model, which includes the return-to-office (RTO) transition to four days per week onsite as a performance indicator.
The RTO-related indicator appears under a heading for “Government-wide corporate priorities,” alongside departmental priorities that include accessibility and inclusion.
The public servant, who was granted anonymity, said the wording appeared around May 2026. They did not know whether colleagues had received similar wording, but said managers typically receive instructions or templates by email about what to include under corporate priorities in performance agreements.
In an email to The Hill Times, CBSA spokesperson Rebecca Purdy confirmed that the agency’s 2026–27 performance-agreement template includes compliance with the agency’s Hybrid Work Model, which includes the transition to four days per week onsite. Purdy added that the wording was developed by CBSA and distributed to executives and managers in May.
Union sees broader pattern emerging
Fillion said PIPSC began receiving reports of the practice in early May, with the number of reports picking up since the end of July. She said the union initially saw examples involving individual managers, but the union is now concerned the practice may be emerging as a standard approach in some departments, although it has not confirmed that conclusively.
PIPSC has raised the issue with Treasury Board and is seeking a co-ordinated approach to how RTO compliance is handled in performance management, Fillion said.
Attendance expectations are already recorded through myWorkArrangements, a Treasury Board application that staff and managers use to complete work agreements, as well as through other employer directives, she noted.
The union’s position is that extending those requirements into performance management, which focuses on work objectives, is “confusing and unnecessary,” Fillion said.
Members have also contacted PIPSC about the issue, although the union could not yet confirm whether grievances had been filed while cases were being examined individually, she said.
Two different realities
Geneviève Morin, an associate researcher with the Canada Research Chair in Comparative Public Management at Quebec’s École nationale d’administration publique, said physical presence can legitimately matter when employees need to perform particular tasks onsite, directly serve the public, or use specific equipment. But she said meeting an attendance requirement is distinct from performing well at a job.
“An organization can legitimately establish rules regarding the workplace and provide for mechanisms when these rules are not followed,” Morin said. “But that does not necessarily mean that compliance with these rules should become a measure of job performance.”
Morin said combining the two can also make a performance rating harder to interpret when an employee otherwise achieves the expected results and demonstrates the required competencies.
“A lower rating may then mean ‘lower performance,’ but also ‘less compliance with the attendance policy,’ even though these are two distinct realities,” she said.
Maria Gintova, an assistant professor of political science at McMaster University who has researched hybrid work in the federal public service, said putting attendance into a performance agreement does not necessarily determine how heavily it will figure in an employee’s assessment because individual managers retain discretion over how they will apply it.
“It really will depend on who your manager is, how they view it, and if they are more strict about everyone being in the office,” she said.
Gintova also questioned what a blanket attendance target can meaningfully say about performance when the value of being onsite varies by job.
“There is no magic number [of days in the office]; it really depends on the position, the requirements to meet with the public, and so on and so forth,” she said. “It cannot be applied universally to every position.”
Sue Williamson, an associate professor at UNSW Canberra who studies hybrid work in the Australian Public Service, agreed that physical presence should not be treated as a proxy for job performance, and said managers in Australia and other countries are increasingly focused on a different approach.
“They're looking at outcomes, not how people do their work or where they do it, but do they get the job done?” she said.
She said that contrast made the practice emerging in parts of Canada’s federal public service particularly notable.
“Historically, the Canadian public service has been a really good employer and an employer of choice in the public services in Western countries,” she said. “That's why this move is even more disappointing.”
Williamson also said that using attendance this way can increase resentment and reduce employee engagement.
“If this continues, employee motivation will just go through the floor and it's going to be bad for organizations,” she said.
No government-wide direction on performance agreements
Martin Potvin, a spokesperson for the Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat (TBS), said workplace presence is part of employees’ terms and conditions of employment, and that deputy heads are responsible for establishing systems to verify compliance with the government’s prescribed-presence direction.
Potvin said TBS has not provided government-wide direction requiring deputy heads to assess onsite-presence compliance through performance agreements.
“However, deputy heads and individual managers may choose to include expectations related to onsite-presence requirements in performance agreements,” Potvin said.
Asked whether TBS considers physical attendance an appropriate measure of job performance, and what consequences can follow when an employee fails an objective included in their agreement, Potvin did not directly address either question.
In response to a question about whether executives themselves are assessed on implementation or enforcement of RTO, Potvin said onsite-presence requirements are not part of government-wide executive performance commitments.
The Hill Times