Remote and Hybrid Work in Alberta: Considerations for Employers

Hybrid and remote work are now established features of many Canadian workplaces. They can improve recruitment and retention, but they also require employers to address a central legal point: work performed at home remains work. The employment relationship, statutory minimum standards, human-rights obligations, privacy duties and safety responsibilities do not disappear simply because the workplace is off-site often at the employee’s home.

The legal starting point: identify the governing regime

Most employment relationships are regulated by the province or territory where the employee works. A smaller group of employers in federally regulated industries—such as banking, interprovincial transportation and telecommunications—are governed by federal employment legislation, including the Canada Labour Code. Employers should therefore avoid treating a policy adopted in one province as a complete national solution.

A sound remote-work program should also account for the employee’s actual work location. An employee who works remotely from a different province may trigger a different employment-standards, human-rights, occupational-health-and-safety, workers’ compensation, payroll or privacy analysis. Cross-border remote work may introduce additional immigration, tax and data-security issues.

Put the arrangement in writing

Remote work is not a legal entitlement of the employee. The employer is empowered to set the terms and conditions of employment including where and how the work is to be performed. Remote work, hybrid work, how often, and from where, should be addressed by an employment agreement, workplace policy, and in union settings, by a collective agreement.

Since the Pandemic, disputes over remote work have increased and employers need to be cautious about imposing changes to remote-work arrangements. For example, in Cressey Construction Corporation v. Parolin, 2026 BCCA 199, the British Columbia Court of Appeal upheld a finding that an employee’s work-from-home arrangement had become an essential oral term of her employment contract. Directing her to return to the office full-time without reasonable notice was a unilateral and substantial change that amounted to constructive dismissal on the facts.

If you are an employer wanting to make changes to the remote work arrangement of an individual employee or collectively to the work force, contact an employment lawyer to help guide the process to minimize risk and have a less painful transition. Below we illustrate some of the considerations when an employer wishes to changes the remote-work arrangement.

Human rights and accommodation

A remote or hybrid arrangement can be a workplace accommodation, but it is not necessarily the only reasonable accommodation. Provincial and Federal human rights legislation applies to most employers. These statutes prohibit adverse treatment in employment on protected grounds. Human rights legislation addresses adverse differentiation in employment and requires an employer relying on a bona fide occupational requirement to establish that accommodation would cause the employer undue hardship.

In Alberta, the Alberta Human Rights Act prohibits an employer from refusing to employ or continue to employ, or from discriminating in a term or condition of employment, on protected grounds including physical disability, mental disability, family status, religion, sex and gender identity or expression. During the Pandemic, mandatory vaccination policies resulted in several human rights complaints across Canada based on discrimination due to religious belief. In some cases, remote work was a viable accommodation, while in other cases, face-to-face contact was an occupational requirement. How the employer implemented vaccination policies was critical in determining if a complaint had merit or if the policy was justified.

Remote work may be considered as part of an individualized accommodation process for disability, caregiving or other protected-ground needs. Employers should:

• assess the employee’s functional restrictions and the essential duties of the role—not simply the preferred work arrangement;
• obtain only the information reasonably necessary to assess the request;
• explore workable alternatives, which may include remote work, modified scheduling, ergonomic equipment, leave or changes to work processes;
• document the analysis, options considered and any undue-hardship evidence; and
• keep accommodation information confidential and separate from general personnel records.

A uniform return-to-office rule can create risk if applied rigidly to an employee who requires accommodation. Conversely, an employer is not required to accept a requested arrangement if it cannot perform the employee’s essential duties or would cause undue hardship. The assessment must be evidence-based and individualized.

Hours of work, overtime and the right to disconnect

Remote work can blur the boundary between work time and personal time. Employers remain responsible for complying with applicable minimum standards on hours of work, overtime, rest periods, record-keeping and leaves. In Alberta, the Employment Standards Code establishes minimum standards for hours of work, overtime, vacation, holidays, leaves, wages and termination. Federally regulated employers must comply with Part III of the Canada Labour Code.

A remote-work policy should specify core availability hours, expected response times, the process for authorizing overtime, how time will be recorded, and whether after-hours communications require a response. A policy cannot remove statutory overtime entitlements by labelling staff as remote, flexible or salaried.

There is no single Canada-wide statutory “right to disconnect.” Ontario, however, requires employers with 25 or more employees on January 1 of a year to maintain a written policy on disconnecting from work by March 1 of that year. Ontario employers should ensure their remote work and disconnecting-from-work policies are coherent; employers elsewhere may still consider comparable expectations as a practical risk-management measure.

Occupational health and safety at the remote workplace

Working from home does not eliminate occupational-health-and-safety obligations. Federally regulated employers must consider Part II of the Canada Labour Code and the Canada Occupational Health and Safety Regulations. In Alberta, the Occupational Health and Safety Act supplies the provincial framework.

For office-based remote work, the principal risks often include ergonomics, slips and falls, electrical hazards, excessive hours, isolation, harassment and psychological health. An effective program may include a home-workspace self-assessment, ergonomic guidance, equipment standards, incident-reporting procedures, defined work areas and a mechanism for raising safety concerns. It should also address whether and when a worker may perform duties in a location that the employer cannot reasonably assess or support.

Employers should carefully consider privacy and security when developing any home-workspace assessment or inspection procedure. A worker’s home is not an ordinary business premises, and an employer should not treat a safety policy as unrestricted access to a private residence.

Privacy, confidentiality, monitoring and cybersecurity

Remote work increases the volume of data accessed through home networks, personal devices and collaboration platforms. It may also lead employers to consider electronic monitoring tools. Before collecting or using information about employees—such as login data, screenshots, keystrokes, device location or video recordings—employers should identify a legitimate purpose, assess whether the measure is proportionate, provide meaningful notice and limit collection, use, access, retention and disclosure.

Privacy obligations depend on the sector and province. PIPEDA governs personal-information handling in the commercial activities it covers, including employee personal information for federally regulated works, undertakings and businesses. Alberta private-sector organizations are subject to the Personal Information Protection Act, which regulates the collection, use and disclosure of personal information for purposes that are reasonable in the circumstances. Other provinces may have substantially similar private-sector privacy laws or different rules for public-sector employers.

A practical remote-work privacy program should address confidentiality risks, approved devices and applications, multi-factor authentication, secure Wi-Fi, encryption, physical protection of paper records, restrictions on shared household access, incident reporting, and secure return or destruction of employer information. It should also set clear expectations for the use of personal devices and for recording virtual meetings.

Performance management, culture and workplace conduct

The same standards of conduct apply whether work is performed onsite or remotely. Employers should make clear how performance will be assessed, how managers should supervise distributed teams, and how employees can report concerns. Policies addressing confidentiality, conflicts of interest, harassment, discrimination and respectful conduct should expressly apply to online meetings, messaging platforms and work-related social media.

Managers require practical training. Inconsistent enforcement, proximity bias in promotions or assignments, informal monitoring practices, and poorly documented return-to-office decisions can create avoidable dispute risk. Employers should use objective performance measures where possible and ensure that remote, hybrid and onsite staff have meaningful access to information, development and advancement opportunities. Further, employees must be made aware of performance monitoring.

A practical checklist for employers

Before implementing or revising a hybrid or remote-work program, employers should:

1. Map the workforce. Identify each employee’s work location, the employer’s jurisdictional status, and any cross-provincial or international arrangements.
2. Review the legal instruments. Check employment agreements, offer letters, collective agreements, policies, accommodation arrangements and established practices.
3. Define the arrangement. Set out eligibility, schedule, approved work locations, equipment, expenses, availability, time recording, and performance expectations. Also, if the workplace circumstances change, employers should contemplate future changes allowing the employer to amend remote work arrangements without risk of a constructive dismissal. 
4. Build an accommodation process. Train decision-makers to assess requests individually and document the analysis.
5. Address health and safety. Use proportionate remote-work risk assessments, ergonomic guidance and clear reporting channels.
6. Control information risk. Align security controls, monitoring practices and privacy notices with the applicable privacy regime.
7. Plan change management. Give careful consideration to notice, employee communications and individualized circumstances before requiring employees to return to the workplace.
8. Train managers and review regularly. A policy is effective only if managers apply it consistently and employees understand it.

Getz Collins and Associates: Advice on Employment Contracts in Alberta

The employment lawyers at Getz Collins and Associates advise Alberta employers and employees on employment matters including remote and hybrid work arrangements.

Remote and hybrid work can be managed successfully, but not through a one-size-fits-all policy. The strongest approach treats the arrangement as an employment-law program: grounded in clear contractual terms, responsive to accommodation obligations, compliant with applicable employment standards and safety rules, and designed with privacy and information security in mind. Employers should obtain jurisdiction-specific advice before making significant changes to location-of-work requirements or implementing intrusive monitoring measures.

From our Calgary office, Getz Collins and Associates advises employers throughout Alberta, including Calgary, Strathmore, Airdrie, Cochrane, Okotoks, Drumheller, Chestermere, Hussar, and surrounding communities.

If your organization is considering a just cause dismissal or responding to an employee’s claim, call 587-391-5600 or contact us online to schedule a consultation with an Alberta employment lawyer.