Constructive dismissal: Hybrid, remote arrangements can quietly harden into contract terms — and mismanaging them can be costly
Nearly two years’ pay and benefits — that was the cost of one Ontario employer’s mandate for an employee to return to the office full-time after two decades with a hybrid work arrangement.
A British Columbia employer was on the hook for a year-and-a-half’s worth of pay for ordering a long-term employee who’d been working under a hybrid model since the advent of the pandemic, and with flexible hours for a decade, back to the office full-time.
The 2017 Ontario case involving a pre-pandemic hybrid working model — Hagholm v. Coreio Inc. — stands as a notable example of what can happen if employers move too quickly and don’t fully consider the situations of hybrid employees. The case involved an employee who, for more than 20 years worked three days a week from home and two in the office under an arrangement rooted in a 110-kilometre commute for the employee.
When the employer tried to change this arrangement, the employee successfully claimed constructive dismissal.
More recently, the 2025 B.C. case of Parolin v. Cressey Construction Corporation featured a long-embedded mix of remote work and flexible hours that was unilaterally replaced with a standard nine-to-five office schedule. The court also treated those changes as fundamental, leading to constructive dismissal.
Employment lawyer David...
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