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The number of sick days employees working for the Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat (TBS) took during the month of September skyrocketed as the department urged public servants to make their way back to their offices at least three days a week.
According to departmental data, TBS employees took a total of 2,191 sick days between September 1 and September 30.
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That’s up significantly from previous years. During the same period in 2023, employees took 1,708.9 sick days. In 2022, they took 1,477.9 sick days and in 2021, they had 1,075.4 sick days. In 2020, during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, TBS employees’ sick days totalled a mere 827.6 days.
Between September 9 and October 8 of this year—the first month the new remote-work rules were in effect—the department said employees took 1,436.9 sick days.
The new rules require roughly 280,000 public servants employed under the Treasury Board to work in office a minimum of three days a week. For executives, the expectation is that they work in the office four days a week.
The increased office presence may be contributing to public servants taking more sick days, doctors say.
“There is no question that this is a much higher magnitude than has actually ever been around,” said Dr. Alykhan Abdulla, a Manotick physician. “Even during the time when people were coming back from COVID there was a lot of issues with mental health, but these numbers are much greater.”
Abdulla, who has been a family doctor for 30 years, said the number of sick note requests he has received has increased steadily. In the first and second weeks of September, he said he received two to three sick note requests a week and now he’s getting between four and six. With six other doctors in his office, he estimated the team was getting about 30 requests a week.
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Half of those requests, Abdulla said, are coming from public servants. In some cases, Abdulla said public servants will look for notes allowing them to work from home for days or months, depending on the issues they’re facing.
Abdulla said he expects the number of requests will continue to rise and that they’re affecting the practices of many family doctors.
“It’s probably the story that we talk about the most – the administrative burden, the burnout and the fact that people are asking for notes more than ever,” Abdulla said.
At TBS, it’s at the discretion of managers to ask for sick notes, though they’re typically not required for short-term leave.
Ada Bayli, a TBS spokesperson, said employees are “asked not to come to the office if they are presenting symptoms of common infectious illnesses like influenza, COVID-19, or viral gastroenteritis” and that managers can allow employees with symptoms to work remotely on days scheduled to be onsite if they are well enough and operations permit it.
“However, employees are encouraged to use the sick leave provisions available to them so that they take the time to get better and, as appropriate, to receive the care they need,” Bayli said in an emailed statement.
The increase of sick days has also come at a time that the ranks of the public service have grown. Since 2020, the TBS population has grown from 2,276 to 2,501 employees.
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