The shift toward more assigned seating for public servants bucks the prevailing trend among private sector employers who are increasingly embracing unassigned workstations and hybrid work, observers say.
Earlier in May, Treasury Board secretary Bill Matthews said the public service would move away from desk hoteling and reinstate assigned seating where possible.
Then, on May 22, federal departments sent out emails to staff affirming the government’s commitment to assigned seating “for the majority of employees.”
The shift away from shared workspaces — or hoteling — makes sense in the context of a four-day return-to-office, CBRE director of workplace strategy Brianna Van Der Mark said, but it runs counter to the current trend in the private sector.
“(The private sector) is definitely moving towards more unassigned seating,” she said. “That’s a fairly consistent trend over time, across industries.”
According to a 2025 report from CBRE , a commercial real-estate services and investment firm, private-sector employers are increasingly turning to unassigned workstations.
The report, based on surveys of CBRE clients, found just 25 per cent of companies used only assigned seating last year — down from 40 per cent in 2024 and from 56 per cent in 2023.
The rate of unassigned seating is driven largely by how often workers go into the office, Van Der Mark said.
The average private-sector organization in North America is currently sitting at about three in-office days per week, according to CBRE data, although hybrid-work practices can vary significantly between teams.
Under a three-day hybrid-work arrangement, most organizations will move to desk-sharing, Van Der Mark said. The approach allows employers to cut down on real-estate costs while ensuring every employee has a workstation.
But at four or five days in office, unassigned seating becomes untenable. CBRE typically doesn’t recommend it.
“Four days a week you can get away with a very, very small sharing ratio,” Van Der Mark said. “At five days a week, you absolutely cannot introduce desk sharing.”
Assigned seating springs from meetings with unions, government says
Desk hoteling is currently widespread in government office buildings and was touted for years as a solution to help shed office space.
According to an Ottawa Citizen data analysis , at least 50 per cent of staff at nearly 40 departments and agencies in the core public administration did not have assigned workstations in 2024.
In a May 22 email to public servants, Treasury Board said the current effort to increase assigned seating was springing from meetings with unions.
“These discussions also underscored the value of assigned seating to enhance collaboration among teams,” the email read.
But Treasury Board and other departments tempered expectations around timing of the rollout.
Many federal departments are unable to accommodate their workforce at four days per week in existing office space, and executives in organizations where space is scarce said unassigned desks would help them meet the four-day mandate sooner.
Treasury Board didn’t answer questions from the Ottawa Citizen about the specific timelines, but said in an email that deputy heads would be responsible for assigning workstations.
Lack of space may hamper return of assigned seating
In February, the government announced it would requiring most public servants back in office four days per week (up from three days) as of July 6.
When asked in February about the four-day mandate, Treasury Board President Shafqat Ali told CBC: “I think we’ll have enough space.”
But last week, due to a lack of space, Treasury Board gave departments some leeway on that deadline, saying departments without enough square footage could “stagger their implementation schedules .”
Several large departments will be forced to do just that, including Global Affairs Canada, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada and the Department of National Defence.
In 2019, before workers were sent home during the COVID-19 pandemic, the National Capital Region had a public service population of about 120,000.
At its peak in 2023-2024, that number had reached more than 155,000. If the government sheds about 10 per cent of its workforce through job cuts, as it plans to do under the “comprehensive expenditure review” outlined in Budget 2025, Ottawa-Gatineau will still be home to thousands more public servants than was the case before the pandemic.
In the meantime, the feds have trimmed office space. Compared to where things stood in 2024, Public Services and Procurement Canada projected a reduction in its national office portfolio of more than seven per cent by 2026-2027.
