As more and more employers order their workers back to the office, employees say they like the flexibility to work from home — and some returning to corporate workplaces aren’t so happy about being forced to return.
According to new data from the Angus Reid Institute, three in five Canadians would prefer to spend the majority of their time working from home, while 79 per cent say they’d want a schedule that allows for some remote work. The numbers also show that 51 per cent of employees who said they’d been ordered back to the office more days a week were either upset or very upset.
Ope Akanbi, a professor at Toronto Metropolitan University who has studied remote work, says the worker sentiment makes sense.
“They’ve learned to bring work into their lives as opposed to trying to fit their lives into a work schedule,” Akanbi said.
Workers passing through Toronto’s Union Station Monday morning agreed — they support work from home when possible.
“I think that if the job can be done at home, they should be allowed to stay at home,” said semi-retired teacher Cherie Lamont. “Since COVID, we’ve learned just how effective we can be if we are working at home.”
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She says that while working in the office still has some merit, a hybrid model that allows for in-person and remote work is usually best.
Devi Rajkumar says in a perfect world, she’d also like to have the option to work from home. While many people in her office work remotely some of the week, she has to commute to Toronto from her home in Alliston, Ont., every day because her job requires working with paper documents that can’t be taken home.
“I would like a balance, for sure,” Rajkumar said. “You get to work with people, you kind of build your own social circle, [but] being at home, you are at your comfort.”
The new numbers come as Canada’s big banks have led the charge on returning to a mostly in-person model of work — TD, Scotiabank, BMO and RBC have all asked staff to be in office four days a week starting this fall. Rogers and Starbucks have also made similar demands that go into effect in coming months.
The companies have justified the choice by saying workers are more productive and benefit from collaboration and mentorship when they work in office.
TD told CBC News in an email that they’re recalling people because in-person work “builds energy and alignment, offers ongoing development and apprenticeship, and strengthens our culture.” In a recent story in the Globe and Mail, BMO cited “collaboration, problem solving, mentorship, innovation, and career development” as reasons to be in-office. Starbucks said in a statement “we do our best work when we’re together.”
But Akanbi says employees don’t necessarily believe claims that they’re more productive in the office, given how easily folks transitioned to working from home during the pandemic.
“Companies posted profits, everything seemed to go on just fine,” Akanbi said. “So it’s not a very compelling argument” to workers, she says.
Akanbi says employers are also better able to control workers when they’re in the office more often. “For the executives, they want to maintain the traditional definition of work because it allows them to control what work looks like and how the worker performs their role.”
And despite the half of survey respondents who say they’re unhappy with return-to-office mandates, Akanbi says that in a tough job market, employers hold more of the power.
“Leverage really is the name of the game here,” Akanbi said. “Times have changed … I think there is more opportunity for employers to sort of compel workers to do what the organizations want.”
Sunira Chaudhri, founder and principal lawyer at Workly Law, also points out that the ability to work from home benefited certain employees, particularly women who’ve been able to balance child care and their careers because of work-from-home allowances. And as work from home shrinks, she says those benefits will, too.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if we saw some discriminatory-type conduct or claims because different groups are going to be impacted by these mandates,” Chaudhri said.
Mackenzie Irwin, an employment lawyer based in Toronto, says employee contracts are key to determining where the work is done.
If hybrid or remote work permissions are written into a contract, then that’s set in stone, Irwin says.
In that case, a change in the remote work policy would count as a “constructive dismissal,” Irwin says, and would require the employer to pay severance.
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But if it’s not written into the contract, Irwin says it’s more complicated. The longer employees have been working from home with no mention of coming back, the more embedded that policy becomes in the worker’s agreement.
That means employers who allowed people to work from home during COVID-19 and haven’t recalled them in the five years since might have “missed the boat” on being able to mandate their workers back to the office, Irwin says.
Changes to health and family status — like a new health condition or having children — could also give employees reason to work from home, according to Chaudhri. Because health and family status are protected grounds, employers might have to make reasonable accommodations.
However, Chaudhri cautions that accommodations still need to be reasonable. If a child needs to be picked up from daycare at 3:30 p.m. every day, for example, that might mean an employee would be allowed to leave work early some nights, but likely wouldn’t exempt them from coming into the office entirely, she said.
Chaudhri says employees who’ve been ordered to go back to work in person who have medical or family concerns should talk to their employers about finding a workaround.
