Asking a specific department to work from the office

[Karoline Verdi]

#92123

Hi,

We have noticed some profitability issues in our call centers and are considering asking our call centers employees to come back to the office Full time.
I was wondering if this is an issue if we don’t extend this rule to other staff members such as Project Managers etc…
Employees in the call centers are hourly employees and our call centers are located in QC, ON and BC
What if an employee refuses? what are our rights as an employer?

Thank you

[vickyp]

#92182

Here is some information to read and consider:

https://hrinsider.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/30142041/Know-laws-of-Province.docx.pdf

Return to The Office or Permanent Work-From-Home? Whatever an Employer Chooses, Lawsuits Will Abound

Returning To The Workplace: Employer Obligations And Options

Failure of Return-to-Work Process Is Not Failure to Accommodate

Employer’s Return-To-Work Duties

Failure of Return-to-Work Process Is Not Failure to Accommodate

Can You Force Telecommuters to Return to Work?

Return to the Workplace – A Toolkit for Heading Back to Work

Return To Work: Managing Employee Reluctance And Refusals

The short answer to your question is that yes you can make a return to the office department specific and required, so long as you accommodate legitimate physical, medical, and family status obligations (having kids at home or in school is NOT a legitimate family status obligation), and give reasonable notice. If an employee refuses, for any non-accommodatable reason, they will have frustrated their contract and no longer be an employee. You are not required to keep your office telecommuting, you may want to because you may lose high performing employees that want that type of employment, but you are not beholden to a work arrangement.

However, you may want to seriously evaluate your reasons for making this decision. You may have behaviour problems that will NOT be solved by bringing employees back to an office, where research shows that productivity and costs are lower and higher respectively. There is NO evidence that employees in an office are more productive. There IS evidence that well managed employees that are aligned with company goals and managed to the right metrics are effective, no matter where they work. (I am personally not an advocate for either work arrangement. I think there are benefits to in person collaborative work and that it may be difficult for some to bridge the technology knowledge necessary to make remote work collaborative; but good people do good work wherever they are. The same can be said for bad people; and it is very easy for us to see location as the cause of bad behaviour, instead of what is probably a deeper issue to resolve.)

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