Employers pushing harder on back-to-work transitions for 2023

For federal workers, starting the work day won’t mean rolling out of bed and powering up the laptop any longer.

A back-to-the-office order begins next week when public sector employees must transition to spending two or three days at the office by March. It’s part of growing trend of employers taking a harder stance on returning to the office this year.

“Employers are reporting that it’s the collaboration, innovation, those types of networking that they’re really finding, difficult to replicate in online work,” explained Tricia Williams, Director of Research at Future Skills Centre.

This week alone, the CEOs of both Disney and Starbucks ordered their corporate employees to spend more time at the office. Last Fall, Apple did the same.

Twitter CEO Elon Musk also famously took the strictest route, demanding a full 40 hours of in-office work from Twitter employees.

Williams thinks whether the days of remote work dwindling is still to be determined. “What we’re seeing is that people are valuing it more than ever and employers are really going to have to make a strong case for what’s going to come out of it,” she said.

According to research from the Future Skills Centre, while working from home may have been a difficult adjustment in the beginning, the most recent survey taken last spring shows that close to 80 percent of respondents now actually prefer it over a traditional workplace.

“They have more time with their families, they’re able to be productive in the same ways in their estimation and impressively in Canada, we see about one in 10 workers reporting that they’re able to move to other communities because they can work remotely,” explained Williams.

Williams adds that inflation and housing considerations also make remote work a more affordable option. The latest data from Statistics Canada shows that the proportion of hybrid workers has been only been on an upward trend since 2022 currently at 9.4 percent.

Management professor at the University of Guelph, Nita Chhinzer, argues that even though workers may have a preference for working remotely, the push to return to the office is not going to ease.

“A lot of people have lost track with advancements at work, what’s going on with co-workers, a lot of research and development has gone to the wayside so that’s one of the big reasons why we want to bring people back to the office.”

Both experts agree that the biggest sacrifice employees may leave behind if they choose solely remote work is the ability for advancement, particularly for underrepresented groups.

“People who want to work fro home more, statistically, are racially underprivileged groups or women and if we allow people to elect to work from home because they’re trying to balance their non work needs, we’re actually taking massive steps back,” said Chhinzer.

Meanwhile the lack of people working regularly in the office has been evident in office vacancy rates. Across Canada, downtown office vacancy rates continue to rise, hitting an all-time high at the end of 2022, at 17.1 per cent as five million square feet of new office space became available across the country, according to Canadian real estate firm CBRE.

In Toronto, the vacancy rate hit 13.6 per cent as half the new supply of office space came available in the city. CBRE said the vacancy rise is attributed to businesses moving into newer developements and leaving behind dated spaces.

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With files from Meredith Bond