The lows and the lows of the three-day RTO

The work of the federal public service. | By Kathryn May.

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We're heading into week two of the new mandate requiring many public servants to spend three days in the office instead of two. It’s been noisy as the public service navigates the transition. There have been rallies, protests, and traffic jams clogging roads to those grey government buildings in Ottawa-Gatineau.

There have been stories of lineups for desks, too little space, and buildings infested with bats, mice, and bugs. There was the PSAC “Buy Nothing” campaign that misfired by urging public servants to pack lunch so as to explicitly not support downtown Ottawa businesses.

But unions are fired up and pushing hard to reverse that order. They plan to take the fight national, positioning remote work as the next frontier of workers’ rights, arguing it’s key to happier, more productive public servants. At the core of their push is productivity.

But here’s the kicker: Treasury Board President Anita Anand is putting together a working group to boost public-service productivity. And what isn’t even up for discussion? Remote work.

So, let’s dig in.

Today:
“There’s going to be blowback” : The growing buzz about PS risks.
What’s blocking efficiency?: Anita Anand intends to find out.
Beware the “son of Phoenix”: Mismanagement on an epic scale?
Imagine 45k grievances: The heavy load of RTO for managers.
A DM retires: Simon Kennedy, after 34 years.
Not a fit for the PS?: Alex Benay has a job for you.

The message PSAC first posted for members. Credit: PSAC.

THE GAFFE
The all-too-easy risk of alienation
The Public Service Alliance of Canada’s gaffe of a campaign – “Buy Nothing” – shows how easily unions could easily alienate Canadians. PSAC’s National Capital Region’s branch came up with the idea in response to pressure from downtown Ottawa business officials to get federal workers back to their desks. The message was: pack lunch and don’t spend your money downtown. “The needs of the downtown core shouldn’t fall on the backs of the workers and the federal public service.”

The backlash was swift. It came from Ottawa Mayor Mark Sutcliffe, the Ottawa Board of Trade and lit up social media. Bill Carroll, a radio personality at Newstalk 580 CFRA, argued the campaign could crush small downtown businesses “in the name of having to spend an extra day a week at a very nice job that pays well.”

“If you’re a member of the Public Service Alliance of Canada, this is going to be a big moment for you. You have a choice to make. If you go along with this boycott, I guarantee you will lose the public entirely.”

Feeling the heat, the union changed the messaging from “Buy Nothing” to “Buy Local,” encouraging its members to shop in their home neighbourhoods. Apologies also came from PSAC national and NCR executives.

The revised PSAC message. Credit: PSAC.

It’s an example of how wrong things can go very quickly.

It also coincides with the growing buzz that unions might want to tread carefully with their pushback on the return-to-office mandate. They risk doing more harm than good to a public service already struggling with a damaged public image.

That’s Donald Savoie’s view. His new book, Speaking Truth to Canadians About Their Public Service, dropped last week. He highlights two major issues: the erosion of both productivity and accountability. He calls out unions as part of the problem, warning that if they “push the envelope” too far, they risk triggering political backlash, cuts, and changes that could seriously damage the public service.

“There’s a lot of growing resentment in Canada towards the federal public service .... and unions beware: You keep pushing, there’s going to be blowback here, and the blowback will be political,” Savoie said. “I think we need to be very careful about how we manage the public service going forward.”

The union beef? There are a few. A big one is the arrival of the three-day decree with zero evidence or justification. Treasury Board admits it has no data, no way to measure whether remote work has boosted or hurt productivity. And union surveys where members self-report increased productivity don’t cut it as valid metrics, as experts point out. PSAC has initiated some deeper research on productivity, including some polling. Here's a sampling of a Sparks Insight survey of 1,635 Canadians that is expected to be released this week.

The lawyers don’t see the logic. The union representing federal lawyers is the latest to file a policy grievance. Gregory Harlow, president of the Association of Justice Counsel, said the order isn’t about operational necessity, but “political and external pressures.” He argues members have proved “their ability to work effectively” remotely, and the decision “is costly, inefficient, arbitrary, and counterproductive.”

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PRODUCTIVITY
Enter Anita Anand, with big promises and tough deadlines
Eyebrows instantly raised when Treasury Board President Anita Anand revealed that the public service will be a big focus of the working group she announced at last month’s cabinet retreat to investigate Canada’s productivity crisis. Barely a mention about the public service in the original announcement,

Here’s Paul Wells’s take on yet another working group followed by his interview with Anand, who said this one will zero in on the productivity of the public service.

Will this nagging question about whether public servants are more productive or not when working remotely be probed? Nope.

Treasury Board is the employer and the government’s general manager, but Anand has made it clear that the return-to-office call isn’t political.

“That decision was made by the public service, led by the clerk of the Privy Council and deputy heads, she told me. It was “a decision made by the public service for the public service.”

Collective bargaining is her turf, but location of work isn’t up for debate. That is a management right.

Anand’s focus? Ensuring the public service delivers for taxpayers. Her working group will dig into what’s blocking efficiency and service delivery. Reformers can give her a long to-list, but clearly the issues of modernizing technology, AI and moving the digital agenda along will play a role.

She argues the timing for such a review is right. Canada’s productivity is sagging while the public sector has grown to 40 per cent of the GDP – led by the ballooning size of the federal public service.

“We have innovation and technologies that we are considering utilizing and we need to examine how best to do that. So service delivery, enhancing productivity, integrating digital technologies, those are three important factors that will go into the working group’s deliberations.”

Critics are already calling it a waste of time. For one thing, governments’ output is what they spend.

Such big reforms, so little time. Former PCO clerk Michael Wernick has written about productivity as a way to unlock public-service reforms. He’s got a long list of possible changes, none of which sounds like something Anand’s working group could realistically tackle by the fiscal update or next budget. Time is running out.

Stayed tuned. Anand will name the working group and release its marching orders within a couple of weeks.

ONE SIZE FITS NONE
“This is the son of Phoenix”
Linda Duxbury says the government’s approach is all wrong. She argues the move to hybrid work could rival its rollout of the Phoenix pay system.

“They have totally mismanaged this whole file, said Duxbury, a change-management and work-life balance expert at Carleton’s Sprott School of Business. “This is the son of Phoenix.”

It was wrong-headed from the start, she argues, saying the one-size-fits-all approach doesn’t work. She first said it nearly two years ago, when Treasury Board brought workers back for two to three days a week.

The country’s largest workforce has too many different organizations, types of jobs and more than 350,000 employees, all with their own personal circumstances. “By trying to be fair to everyone, they are fair to nobody,” she said.

There is also the state of the offices people are returning to. Many are ill-equipped or don’t have enough room. Some are under construction. People have to book desks. There is no personal space.

A measure? “Good luck with that.” Academics have forever struggled to measure productivity among professionals, she said. Yet the government, with a largely professional workforce, forged ahead with hybrid work without any clear way to track it.

Instead, it should look at employee engagement. People are productive if they see value in what they do, if they enjoy their work, and if they have resources. It also helps to get kudos and feedback for what they do, she said.

“But productivity measurement and counting? Good luck with that. It’s a gnarly wicked problem to measure the productivity of professionals.”

Managers, it’s yours to sell. It’s particularly unfair to managers and executives, many of whom aren’t enthusiastic about the mandate they now have to enforce. The decision wasn’t theirs, she says, but they’re left to sell it and handle the fallout.

Few likely received training to manage the shift. And on top of their already relentless workload, they’re now sifting through telework grievances and accommodation requests case by case, Duxbury said.

When do managers do their real jobs? Imagine 45,000 employees ask their managers for special accommodations or file individual grievances. A manager with 10 employees would have to spend about hour on the initial discussion plus follow-up. That’s a couple of days each week – time that has to come from somewhere.

“It was crazy before, when they just picked a number out of the air with absolutely no justification for it,” said Duxbury. “And if the union wants to be really militant on it, the government is going to come to a standstill, and that is going to enrage the public.”

A no-win for the government. Canadians already think public servants are pampered, so if government caves and backtracks on the mandate, people are bound to be enraged. But stick with it, and there are still long lines or service delays that will cause just as much outrage. There’s not a lot of public sympathy for public servants. Like Savoie, Duxbury thinks unions must tread carefully.

But enough of RTO.

COMINGS / GOINGS
Simon Kennedy, “most consequential” DM, retires from Innovation
Innovation Deputy Minister Simon Kennedy retired from the public service on Friday after 34 years, leaving a big gap to fill. A trusted, all-purpose deputy minister, Kennedy (pictured) was often counted on to manage key responsibilities and crises.

Spotted early as a rising star, Kennedy quickly climbed the ranks and was frequently mentioned as a contender for the top job as clerk. He spent half his career in deputy-minister roles, including the last five years at ISED — a long stint for a DM these days. His departure was a top story in The Logic, a business and tech outlet, whose editor-in-chief called Kennedy “the most consequential” DM at ISED in recent years.

Kennedy also held top roles at Health Canada, Industry Canada, Foreign Affairs and International Trade, and PCO, and served as former prime minister Stephen Harper’s G-20 “sherpa” or personal representative.

Now the focus shifts to who will step in to fill his shoes.

Possible contenders include Philip Jennings, Canada’s representative at the International Monetary Fund, Paul Thompson, DM at ESDC barely a year, and Paul Halucha, deputy secretary at PCO. Both have senior experience at ISED. Finance DM Chris Forbes comes up as a versatile executive, but Finance is considered the top DM job.

JOB ALERT
Calling all public-service misfits
Alex Benay, PSPC’s pay czar, is still living up to his old nickname, the disruptor-in-chief, from his days as the government’s CIO.

He has taken to LinkedIn to recruit a senior program analyst for his office. The key requirements? First, the ideal candidate must be “driven to change how we work” and help fix “our largest public administration failure in generations.”

Not many senior bureaucrats would use the troubled Phoenix pay system as a recruiting pitch.

But there’s more. “Ideally you have been told you are not a fit for the public service.”

Not a joke. “We really are looking for someone,” wrote Benay.”

BTW, his inbox? Flooded.

On a scale of zero to 10, how was today?

A bit about me. I cover and analyze the federal public service for Policy Options as the Accenture Fellow on the Future of the Public Service. I've been reporting on the public service for 25 years. My work has appeared in the Ottawa Citizen and iPolitics, and has earned a National Newspaper Award. My full bio is here. X: @kathryn_may.

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