Building on Solid Foundations: Hybrid and Remote Work Policies in the Public Sector

The global pandemic forced all administrations to quickly and almost exclusively adopt remote work. After the pandemic, however, governments opted for various work modes, ranging from a full return to the office to total adoption of remote work, including hybrid models. This research aims to answer the following questions: What information did public agencies rely on to assess remote work productivity when developing their telework and hybrid work policies? To what extent are digital work monitoring tools used?

We examined the practices of federal and provincial departments in Canada through 166 Access to Information and Privacy (ATIP) requests. Our findings reveal that only 14.3% of the Canadian departments studied conducted thorough analyses on the productivity, effectiveness, efficiency, or equity of telework before implementing their post-pandemic policy. Additionally, about 10% of departments used some form of digital monitoring tools for their employees.

We found no correlation between departments that conducted comprehensive evaluations of the effectiveness, efficiency, and equity of remote and hybrid work and their use of digital work surveillance. In summary, we have little evidence indicating that telework and hybrid work policies were developed using a data-driven approach.

Presenter Bio:

Étienne Charbonneau is a professor and holder of the Canada Research Chair in Comparative Public Management at the National School of Public Administration. His recent work focuses on workplace surveillance.

Moderator : Christopher A. Cooper, Associate Professor, University of Ottawa.