Feb. 9, 2023 "Canadian employers face 'resistance' as they seek to increase office days": Today I found this article by Holly McKenzie- Sutter on BNN Bloomberg:
Hybrid and remote arrangements that became commonplace during the COVID-19 pandemic may not be going away any time soon, but some big Canadian employers want people to clock in from their office desks more frequently.
Nearly three years after the global pandemic set in, sending office workers home with their laptops in hand, public health restrictions have largely lifted, and companies are starting to ramp up their number of mandatory office days. Starbucks, Disney and Twitter are among the global names that recently announced plans to order workers back to corporate offices more frequently in 2023.
Canadian employers are tentatively following suit, but leaders acknowledge they are walking a tricky tightrope as survey data suggests many Canadians would consider changing jobs if forced back to their offices full time.
In an interview with BNN Bloomberg last month, Royal Bank of Canada CEO Dave McKay said his organization is “on a journey to make sure that we're in half or more than half the time in the office,” but also spoke to the challenges of getting hybrid staff back at their office desks for his ideal two-to-three days per week.
“There is resistance, honestly. It's a difficult needle to move,” McKay said.
Some junior and senior employees want to be in the office, he said, while many employees want to “balance their lives” and family obligations.
McKay said meeting with employees and hearing their perspectives has been important to the ongoing transition.
“It's really about connecting your organization and making sure we're on the same page at the same time,” he said.
Other Canadian banks said they intend to keep hybrid workweeks, with some adjustments to accommodate people wary of long commutes.
David Noel, senior vice-president of Global HR Services at Scotiabank, said the organization is taking a “purpose-driven” approach to its return-to-office plan,
with in-office requirements depending on the
type of role
and tasks on a given day.
Employee feedback is playing a role in the plans. Noel said Scotiabank is opening two new “community working spaces” in Mississauga and Scarborough this month to accommodate workers who moved further west or east of Toronto during the pandemic,
after hybrid employees cited long commutes as a main factor keeping them at home.
The new workspaces include “areas for
focused work,
a flexible area for team meetings
or training session,
day lockers,
printing
and a bistro.”
“As the response from employees has been positive, we will continue to take this activity-based approach to work.
We also remain committed to testing new and different work options based on feedback from leaders and employees,” Noel said in a statement.
Bank of Montreal said its work models are also “driven by client, job and business needs,” with some workers based in office, others hybrid and some remote.
As corporate Canada tries to accommodate more in-office days, public sector workers are also under pressure to return.
Federal public service workers were mandated to return to the office in January after nearly three years, despite vocal pushback from their union.
And next month, City of Toronto employees are being asked to return to their offices for two to three days per week.
In a statement to BNNBloomberg.ca, the City of Toronto said it updated its hybrid work policy as other companies moved to do the same in light of loosening pandemic measures.
The first year of the City’s hybrid work plan, which began in 2022, took a “less prescriptive approach,” the statement said, “which was more reflective of the place the City was at in the pandemic, allowing for physical distancing.”
The union representing city workers, meanwhile, said it’s unhappy with the city’s plan as COVID-19 continues to spread,
and workers feel they have been productive enough working at home.
“We are perplexed that the City of Toronto is initiating a mandatory return-to-work scheme for employees who have capably been executing their work tasks remotely,” Casey Barnett, president of CUPE Local 79, said in a written statement to BNNBloomberg.ca
Barnett also noted that COVID-19 continues to pose a public health threat but measures aimed at reducing viral spread have been reduced.
“We are urging the City to reconsider this ill-advised return-to-work plan,” Barnett said.
Canadian employers face 'resistance' as they seek to increase office days - BNN Bloomberg
Jun. 30, 2023 "What is the future of remote work?": Today I found this article by Daniel Johnson on BNN Bloomberg:
As many companies are looking to bring employees back into the office, one tech executive said the balance of power has shifted more toward employees than ever before and companies should adapt in order to attract and retain top talent.
Dan Burgar, the co-founder and chief executive officer of Frontier Collective, a Vancouver-based organization representing the interest of the technology industry, said employees are now shaping what the return to the office will look.
“Right now we're seeing this landscape where employees actually have more power than they have ever had before,” Burgar said while speaking at the Collision tech conference in Toronto on Thursday.
According to Burgar, employees are dictating
what the working arrangement will look like
and the benefits they can get.
He said his organization has spoken with a couple of startups that tried to implement four or five days in the office but received pushback.
Bill Smith, founder and chief executive officer at Landing, said during the conference Thursday that determining who has leverage in return-to-office discussions depends on the role and ethos of the company.
“It depends on the role and there's going to be opportunities created on both sides, there is going to be lots of remote first opportunities for entry-level roles all the way up to the highest level of engineering roles,” he said.
However, widespread remote work policies could have broader implications for the labour market, according to Smith.
“If you’re an entry-level role, one of the concerns we have in the U.S. is,
if you can work from anywhere
are we going to start hiring people in lower cost countries,” he said.
Burgar said that the current shift in working arrangements has a number of people working in the office for about two days a week in a hybrid situation and are finding “they’re able to get a lot more heads-down work done.”
He said a lot of large tech companies are asking employees to come into the office about two to three days a week, and he believes companies will need to continue in order to attract the “best and brightest.”
However, with employees out of the office for large parts of the week, Burgar said those employees are missing out on “watercooler conversations,” where problems could be solved “on the fly.”
As many companies adopt hybrid arrangements with their workforce, Smith said that in some cases it is the “worst of both” because “you can’t live somewhere else.”
He said you have to live in one location and go into the office a few days a week and miss out on “those water cooler conversations” during the other days.
Smith said that the “pendulum is kind of swinging back” and that people are looking to connect with one another, which is difficult to do over a screen. He said this is bringing some people back into the office.
COMMERCIAL REAL ESTATE
As hybrid and remote working arrangements continue, Burgar said this will drastically change the landscape of commercial real estate.
“Commercial real estate, I think as we know it, is dead,” he said.
However, Smith says that despite the sentiment to “bash on commercial real estate,” people are not being called back into work to save the sector.
He said developers are “extremely creative” and will be able to find new sources of demand.
“And so all of these people that own these large office buildings that are currently empty or 50 per cent utilized, they're going to find new ways to utilize those buildings and it's probably going to look like a mix of residential and third places and maybe hotel and office and all together,” he said.
“So I think the next decade we're going to see a lot of exciting things in commercial real estate that's been forced by the change of the way that we all work.”
https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/what-is-the-future-of-remote-work-1.1940162
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