Several major Canadian employers are pushing for workers to spend more time working in-office this summer, despite evidence hybrid work can boost productivity.
Rogers and TD Bank both called for employees to return to offices last week, underscoring a larger shift back to traditional workplace norms after hybrid work reached a peak during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Working from offices may contribute to a sense of workplace culture and unity for employees. But there is evidence that flexible work can help a company’s performance and inclusivity, while hard rules on either in-office or at-home work can negatively affect employee health.
Experts say rigid mandates will likely increase tensions between employers and workers.
“We’re seeing a lot of worker resistance to returning to the office,” said Sylvia Fuller, a labour researcher at the University of British Columbia. “Workers are not willing to put up with that because of the benefits of working from home.”
‘I can actually be more productive’
For Sarah Rennick, working from home means she can have a fulfilling career while living close to her family in Fredericton, New Brunswick.
Remote work has also saved her and her company money. Her employer doesn’t have to rent an office, and Rennick can spend less on housing.
“Instead of having to go to Toronto or Montreal to get a job, remote work means I can stay here,” Rennick said via video call from her home office. “My boyfriend and I can just live here where all of our family is — and we can also afford a house here.”
Rennick, who is an operations lead for a U.S.-based software company, has worked from home since before the COVID-19 pandemic and has helped her company hire other remote workers.
She said the structure of the company has allowed the company to build a team of highly skilled workers across the world. Her boss, for example, logs in to work from South Africa.
“We’re just looking for who’s going to be the best person to work here,” Rennick said. “It really is irrelevant where they live. It’s just about who they are and their skills.”
Working from home also lets Rennick build her own working environment. Her home office has a window, two large bookshelves of plants and, perhaps most importantly, privacy. She said having her own space, away from distractions, is vital for her focus.
“I had a really hard time working in an office environment,” Rennick said. “Being able to work from home is super great for me. I’ve set it up in a way that I’m not distracted, so I can actually be more productive than if I was in an actual office.”
Swinging back to office
Rennick is one of nearly four million Canadians who spend most of their time working remotely, according to Statistics Canada.
That’s less than half the number of Canadians who worked from home during the COVID-19 pandemic. In April 2020, around 40 per cent of Canadians were working from home. Five years later, that portion has dropped to 18 per cent, according to Statistics Canada data.
This summer, several employers are pushing for even more workers to return to offices.
Big banks like Toronto-Dominion, the Bank of Montreal and Scotiabank informed employees they will be required to work four days per week from the office starting this fall.
Rogers Communications told corporate staff last week it expects employees to work five days each week from the office starting next year.
Earlier this month, Starbucks told corporate staff in Canada they’ll need to work from the office at least four days each week.
Meanwhile, the union for B.C. public sector workers announced last week it had reached an impasse with the province over wage negotiations and issues including remote work provisions.
Sandeep Aujla is an Ontario-based leadership consultant who coaches executives and Canadians in leadership roles. She says her clients in the public sector are feeling political pressure to head back to the office.
“Stakeholders expect that if public funds are paying for these jobs, these people should be visible in the public eye rather than working from home,” she said.
She added that private sector clients are also feeling pressure to return to more traditional work arrangements.
“There is so much global pressure just to kind of swing the pendulum back,” Aujla said. “I think organizations struggle with workers being out there and doing their own thing.”
Some of the friction isn’t just between employees and employers. It’s between workers and their colleagues. In sectors in which some workers can work from home and others can’t, remote work can cause division among co-workers.
“With health care, especially during the COVID-19 lockdowns, it created a divide,” she said. “It created a bit of an ‘us versus them’ mentality and this perception of inequity.”
Still, Aujla said, it’s important that leaders recognize the benefits of flexible work arrangements for productivity, child care and worker happiness.
A 2022 systematic review of scientific literature suggests hybrid work boosts worker productivity and performance.
Researchers reviewed 2,453 research articles about the impact of working from home on productivity and performance. They extracted data from the 37 most relevant studies.
Nineteen studies found that employees with the choice to work from home outperformed in-office counterparts. Just five studies showed mixed or no effects.
But when working from home became mandatory — like during the pandemic — findings became more complicated. Some of the studies found mandatory remote work led to employees overworking and experiencing issues like burnout.
UBC’s Fuller said rigid return-to-office mandates won’t help workers or companies. Instead, she said, these orders are likely to drive a wedge between employees and leadership.
Workers have regularly pushed back against the directives.
A 2022 policy brief published by Stanford University found one in five hybrid workers was not following return-to-office mandates.
Earlier this year, the Canadian Press found thousands of federal public servants were not following a three-day-per-week return-to-office mandate.
It’s not surprising that employees like the benefits of working from home, Fuller said. Flexibility can help caregivers look after children or elderly adults while keeping their jobs. It can allow employees who need special workplace accommodations to perform and excel at jobs, she added. And it reduces instances of harassment or workplace discrimination for people of colour.
“The upshot is that just mandating people back to the office doesn’t actually solve any of the problems,” Fuller said. “It creates other problems by damaging morale, creating greater inequalities and potentially losing valued employees.”
