Career consultant Sweta Regmi remembers the days when working from home was unfathomable to her.
If you had asked him years ago, when he was working in a call center, Regmi would have had a question of its own for you.
“Are you crazy?” Regmi, founder and CEO of Teachndo Career Consultancy in Sudbury, Ontario, said, laughing at the distant memory.
But that was then, not today, when even his former call center colleagues were working from home in the midst of a pandemic-era shift toward more flexible work.
However, the proportion of Canadians working from home most of the time is declining, as the protective cover of public health restrictions is removed and businesses grow safer from returning their people to work. office.
This is creating tension with those employees who do not want to go back to the way things were, but who will have to adjust if that is what they have to do.
A changing landscape?
Statistics Canada reports that nearly one in five employed Canadians still did most of their work from home in May.
It looks like a lot, but it’s down more than 24 percent in January, well below what was reported during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Alex Lupul / CBC
Ruel Tria has been working at home for more than two years. For him, the arrangement is fine.
“Our business allows it,” said Tria, an operations supervisor who did all his work in a Toronto office before the pandemic.
But that could change, as his workplace has sent out surveys asking about possible concerns employees might have about returning to the office.
Tria has been saving money while working from home, as well as the time she used to spend on commuting.
“My concern is obviously the rising fuel costs,” Tria said, noting that this is just one of the costs that are costing passengers their lives.
Nita Chhinzer, an associate professor of human resources in the management department at the University of Guelph in southwestern Ontario, said there are several reasons why employees do not want to return to the office, not all of them. strictly financial.
The story goes on
TARGET | Various attitudes when returning to the office:
“Maybe someone moved out of town, or maybe they sold the car, or maybe they don’t want to travel anymore, or maybe they’re realizing that they’re no longer interested in labor policy and drama,” Chhinzer told CBC Canada tonight Friday.
Beyond that, he said, there are different views among people about what works best for them, including those who want to return to the office more regularly, and that’s something employers have to contend with.
“The challenge for employers today is: how do they provide that flexibility but still create an environment where they can bring people together and recreate the pulse of the workplace?” said Chhinzer.
People are no longer where they were
Cities are also feeling the effects of seeing fewer people walking into the office.
In Toronto, the return to the office has been delayed and pedestrian traffic in the core of the downtown office remains well below pre-pandemic levels.
Evan Mitsui / CBC
Marcy Burchfield, vice president of the Toronto Region Board of Trade’s Blueprint Economic Institute, said the city’s long pandemic restrictions have shaped its pace of recovery.
“People in the Toronto area worked remotely for extended periods,” Burchfield said.
“There is a direct relationship between the time a jurisdiction was closed and the return trajectory of the office. And Toronto is a perfect example of that.”
And that trajectory could continue to be slower than some companies would like: Mark Rose, chief executive of commercial real estate firm Avison Young, told the Globe and Mail last week that a full, global return to office is likely be five. years away.
Flexibility is a key attraction for some
On the East Coast, Paige Black is working on a new job she was looking for specifically because of the flexibility it offers to allow her to work from home in Dartmouth, NS.
He quit his last job because this option would no longer be available in the same way.
TARGET | Not everyone wants to go back:
Like Tria, Black used to work in an office before the pandemic. The nonprofit admits she was “not a big fan” of working from home, at least initially.
But he soon discovered that more flexible work offered many benefits, including greater control over his day-to-day work.
“I felt like I was coming back longer,” he said.
Presented by Sweta Regmi
For Black and many others, this kind of flexibility is hard to beat.
“No one can put a price on flexibility,” said Regmi, the career consultant, summing up his value to workers. “This is priceless.”
Embracing flexibility
In some of Canada’s largest organizations, there is a recognition that flexibility is here to stay, and they are focusing on what they need to do to support it.
At the Canada Life Assurance Company, for example, the organization aims to support both its people and various work styles.
Posted by Liz Kulyk
“Our focus on getting back to the office is what allows our 11,000 employees to do the best job, wherever they are,” Colleen Bailey Moffitt, the company’s senior vice president of human resources, said in a statement. electronic.
Bailey Moffitt said Canada Life is “committed to supporting a hybrid and flexible way of working” and acknowledged that its teams and people have different needs. It allows leaders to decide “which style of work best suits their team.”
But the insurance giant has also taken steps to ensure that its various campuses and offices are staff-friendly and fully equipped for face-to-face work. And it has invested in these spaces over the past two years, including modernizing its meeting rooms and common areas.
Other large entrepreneurs have made similar investments in facilities throughout the pandemic, as the long-term changing needs of their businesses have become apparent.
The federal government has also paid attention to the broader change in the way people work, including their own public officials.
“During the COVID-19 pandemic, federal public officials demonstrated their ability to adapt to new ways of working both locally and remotely, while delivering results for Canadians,” said the COVID-19 pandemic. Treasury Board of Canada in a statement.
The board said it has no government-wide data on the proportion of federal officials working on-site compared to a remote setup, but said “more and more employees are opening up to jobs on a regular basis. “.
The experience of the past two more years will help guide the government in developing “hybrid and flexible workforce models as part of how and where public officials work in the future,” the board said.