“Work was never meant to be a place we report to, but a purpose we contribute to. The wiser organization will not ask where its people are sitting. It will ask whether trust, accountability, collaboration, creativity, and service are still being faithfully delivered.” – MJ Martin
Introduction
The struggle to return to work has become one of the defining organizational challenges of the post-pandemic era. Six years ago, large and small businesses, government departments, utilities, banks, telecommunications companies, professional firms, and many other enterprises were forced to respond rapidly to COVID-19. Public health risk, lockdowns, school closures, and employee safety concerns required employers to adopt remote work at a speed few would have imagined possible. Communication technology evolved just as quickly. Video meetings, cloud platforms, digital signatures, remote project management tools, shared workspaces, and secure virtual private networks allowed many organizations to continue operating while employees worked from home. In many cases, productivity did not collapse. In some cases, it improved.
Today, the crisis conditions that justified universal remote work have passed, but the workplace expectations created during that period remain. Employers are now attempting to restore some version of the older workforce model, whether through partial return to office policies, hybrid arrangements, or full-time in-office mandates. Employees, however, have experienced the benefits of working from home and are naturally resisting directives that appear to reduce flexibility without always offering a clear operational reason.
The Pandemic Workplace Revolution
The pandemic proved that many forms of knowledge work could be performed effectively outside the traditional office. Employees learned to structure their days around digital tools, virtual meetings, and asynchronous communication. Employers discovered that certain functions did not require physical presence every day. Customer service, administration, software development, accounting, policy analysis, sales support, engineering review, and many management functions could often be performed remotely with acceptable or even strong results.
This shift also changed employee expectations. Work from home reduced commuting time, improved personal scheduling flexibility, allowed employees to manage family responsibilities more easily, and gave many people a greater sense of control over their day. For employees in expensive urban centres, the savings in transportation, parking, meals, clothing, and time were meaningful. The office was no longer seen as the automatic centre of productivity. It became one possible work location among several.
The Employer’s Perspective
Employers have legitimate reasons for wanting people back in the office. Some organizations depend on collaboration, mentoring, supervision, security, culture, and rapid informal problem solving. Junior employees often learn by observing experienced colleagues. Complex projects can benefit from in-person discussion. Leadership teams may believe that workplace presence strengthens accountability, loyalty, innovation, and organizational identity.
For some roles, physical location matters very little. If an employee produces measurable work independently and communicates effectively, the argument for mandatory office attendance may be weak. In other cases, location is central to the role. Field operations, secure data environments, laboratories, public service counters, control rooms, customer-facing offices, manufacturing, logistics, and collaborative project teams may require a common physical workplace. The central problem is that many return to office policies are being applied broadly, while the actual need for office attendance often varies by role, function, department, and business objective.
Employee Resistance and Workplace Trust
Employee resistance is not simply laziness or entitlement. Many employees believe they proved their value during the pandemic. They met deadlines, served customers, managed teams, and kept organizations running from home. When employers now require attendance without clearly explaining the operational value, employees may interpret the directive as a lack of trust.
This tension has given rise to new workplace behaviours. The Globe and Mail reported that BCE Inc., the parent company of Bell Canada, terminated a small number of employees after an internal review found intentional and repeated falsification of workplace attendance. The reported examples included employees entering the office, swiping their key cards to record attendance, and then immediately leaving. Other scenarios included an employee swiping before midnight and again after midnight to create the appearance of attending on two separate days, and another employee entering the premises to use fitness facilities before leaving. These examples illustrate a deeper problem. Once attendance becomes a compliance metric rather than a meaningful part of work design, some employees may attempt to satisfy the appearance of compliance while avoiding the substance of the policy.
Legal and Ethical Implications
The BCE example also highlights the legal and ethical complexity of return to office enforcement. According to the report, Bell considered the terminations to be “for cause,” a serious employment law position because it can eliminate severance entitlement. Employment law commentary in the same report noted that cause is typically reserved for serious misconduct such as dishonesty, theft, fraud, or behaviour that damages the employment relationship. However, these cases are highly fact-specific. Important questions include whether the employer clearly communicated the policy, whether the rules were enforced consistently, whether managers condoned informal practices such as “coffee badging,” and whether employees were warned before termination.
From an ethical perspective, deliberate falsification of attendance is difficult to defend. If an employer has a clear policy, and an employee intentionally misrepresents compliance, the issue becomes one of honesty, not merely workplace preference. At the same time, employers must be careful not to reduce workplace performance to swipe-card data. Attendance may be easy to measure, but it is not always the same as contribution, productivity, or value.
A Better Path Forward
The return to work debate should not be framed as a simple contest between employer control and employee freedom. A more mature approach would begin with role-based analysis. Employers should ask which activities genuinely benefit from physical presence, which tasks can be performed remotely, and which outcomes matter most. Hybrid work should be designed around business purpose, not nostalgia for the pre-pandemic office.
Clear communication is essential. Employees need to understand why office presence is required, how many days are expected, what exceptions apply, and how compliance will be measured. Managers must enforce policies consistently and avoid informal arrangements that contradict official rules. Employees, in turn, must recognize that flexibility depends on trust. Misrepresenting attendance undermines that trust and weakens the case for remote work.
Summary
The struggle to return to work reflects a permanent change in the relationship between employers, employees, technology, and place. The pandemic proved that work could be more flexible than previously assumed. The post-pandemic period is proving that flexibility still requires structure, honesty, accountability, and managerial clarity. The most successful organizations will not simply order employees back to the office. They will define why the office matters, when it matters, and for whom it matters. In the modern workplace, presence should not be symbolic. It should be purposeful.
About the Author:
Michael Martin is the Vice President of Technology with Metercor Inc., a Smart Meter, IoT, and Smart City systems integrator based in Canada. He has more than 40 years of experience in systems design for applications that use broadband networks, optical fibre, wireless, and digital communications technologies. He is a business and technology consultant. He was a senior executive consultant for 15 years with IBM, where he worked in the GBS Global Center of Competency for Energy and Utilities and the GTS Global Center of Excellence for Energy and Utilities. He is a founding partner and President of MICAN Communications and before that was President of Comlink Systems Limited and Ensat Broadcast Services, Inc., both divisions of Cygnal Technologies Corporation (CYN: TSX).
Martin served on the Board of Directors for TeraGo Inc (TGO: TSX) and on the Board of Directors for Avante Logixx Inc. (XX: TSX.V). He has served as a Member, SCC ISO-IEC JTC 1/SC-41 – Internet of Things and related technologies, ISO – International Organization for Standardization, and as a member of the NIST SP 500-325 Fog Computing Conceptual Model, National Institute of Standards and Technology. He served on the Board of Governors of the University of Ontario Institute of Technology (UOIT) [now Ontario Tech University] and on the Board of Advisers of five different Colleges in Ontario – Centennial College, Humber College, George Brown College, Durham College, Ryerson Polytechnic University [now Toronto Metropolitan University]. For 16 years he served on the Board of the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE), Toronto Section.
He holds three master’s degrees – in business (MBA), communication (MA), and education (MEd). As well, he has three undergraduate diplomas and seven certifications in business, computer programming, internetworking, project management, media, photography, and communication technology. He has completed over 80 next generation MOOC (Massive Open Online Courses) [aka Micro Learning] continuous education programs in a wide variety of topics, including: Economics, Python Programming, Internet of Things, Cloud, Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive systems, Blockchain, Agile, Big Data, Design Thinking, Security, Indigenous Canada awareness, and more.