Yet the proportion of Canadians who are working from home most of the time is decreasing, as the protective lid of public health restrictions is pulled back and businesses grow more confident about bringing their people back to the office.
That’s setting up tension with those employees who don’t want to go back to the way things were — but who will have to adjust if that’s what they must do.
Rising fuel prices are just one cost that office staff returning to the workplace will face following an extended period of working from home during the pandemic. (Alex Lupul/CBC)
Ruel Tria has been working at home for more than two years. For him, the arrangement is just fine.
“Our business allows that,” said Tria, an operations supervisor who did all of his work in a Toronto office prior to the pandemic.
But that could change, as his workplace has sent out surveys asking about potential concerns employees might have about returning to the office.
Tria has been saving money while working at home, as well as the time he used to spend commuting.
Nita Chhinzer, an associate professor of human resources in the department of management at the University of Guelph in southwestern Ontario, said there are various reasons employees are not keen on returning to the office — not all of them strictly financial in nature.
WATCH | Varying attitudes on heading back to the office:
The push and pull of bringing people back to the office
5 hours ago
Duration 1:47
Nita Chhinzer, an associate professor of human resources at the University of Guelph, talks to CBC’s Canada Tonight about issues employers are wrestling with as they try to bring staff back to the office after an extended period of working from home during the pandemic.
“Maybe someone moved away from the city, or maybe they sold the car, or maybe they don’t want to do the commute anymore, or maybe they’re realizing that the work politics and drama isn’t of interest to them anymore,” Chhinzer told CBC’s Canada Tonight on Friday.
Beyond that, she said, there are varying views among people on what works best for them — including those who want to be back in the office more regularly — and that’s something employers have to wrestle 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 kind of recreate the pulse of the workplace?” Chhinzer said.
People aren’t where they used to be
Cities are also feeling the effects of seeing fewer people make the trek into the office.
The proportion of Canadians who are working from home most of the time is decreasing, as the protective lid of public health restrictions is pulled back and businesses grow more confident about bringing staff back to the office. (Evan Mitsui/CBC)
Marcy Burchfield, vice-president of the Toronto Region Board of Trade’s Economic Blueprint Institute, said the lengthy pandemic restrictions the city faced have shaped its rate of recovery.
“People across the Toronto region, they worked remotely for prolonged periods of times,” Burchfield said.
“There’s a direct relationship between how long a jurisdiction was locked down and the return of office trajectory. And Toronto is a perfect example of that.”
And that trajectory could remain slower than some businesses would like: Mark Rose, chief executive of the commercial real estate firm Avison Young, told the Globe and Mail this past week that a full, across-the-board return to the office is likely five years away.
Flexibility a key draw for some
Out on the East Coast, Paige Black is working in a new job that she specifically sought out because of the flexibility it offers in allowing her to work from home in Dartmouth, N.S.
She left her last job because that option was no longer going to be available in the same way.
WATCH | Not everyone wants to go back:
Companies forcing return to office a dealbreaker for some, survey suggests
3 months ago
Duration 2:05
One in three Canadians say they would consider looking for a new job if their employer forced them back into the office and nearly a quarter would quit immediately, a new CBC News and Angus Reid survey suggests.
Like Tria, Black used to work in an office before the pandemic. The non-profit professional admits she “wasn’t a huge fan” of working from home, at least initially.
But she soon found that more flexible work offered many advantages, including more control over her day-to-day life.
“I felt like I got more of my time back,” she said.
Sweta Regmi, the founder and CEO of Teachndo Career Consultancy in Sudbury, Ont., says that for some employees, the ability to have flexible work is a ‘priceless’ perk. (Submitted by Sweta Regmi)
For Black and many others, that kind of flexibility is hard to beat.
“Nobody can put a price tag on flexibility,” said Regmi, the career consultant, summing up its worth to workers. “That’s priceless.”
Embracing flexibility
At some larger organizations in Canada, there’s a recognition that flexibility is here to stay — and they’re focusing on what they need to do to support that.
At the Canada Life Assurance Company, for instance, the organization is aiming to support both its people and a range of working styles.
The Canada Life Assurance Company says it has made changes to its main campuses and some of its regional offices, in a bid to provide more updated meeting facilities and more modern meeting areas for its employees. (Submitted by Liz Kulyk)
“Our approach to returning to the office is one that empowers our 11,000 employees to do their best work — wherever they are,” Colleen Bailey Moffitt, the company’s senior vice-president of human resources, said in an emailed statement.
Bailey Moffitt said Canada Life is “committed to supporting a hybrid, flexible way of working” and recognizes its teams and people have varying needs. It permits leaders to decide “which work style fits best for their team.”
But the insurance giant has also taken steps to make sure its various campuses and offices are welcoming to staff and fully equipped for their in-person work. And it has invested in those spaces over the past two years, including modernizing its meeting rooms and common spaces.
The federal government has also paid attention to the broader shift in how people — including its own public servants — are working.
“During the COVID-19 pandemic, federal public servants proved their ability to adapt to new ways of working both on-site and remotely while delivering results for Canadians,” the Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat said in a statement.
The board said it does not have government-wide data available on the proportion of federal servants working on-site versus a remote setup, but it said “more and more employees are making their way into work sites on a regular basis.”
The experience of the past two-plus years will help guide the government in developing “flexible, hybrid workforce models as part of how and where public servants work in the future,” the board said.
TOKYO (AP) — Japanese technology group SoftBank swung back to profitability in the July-September quarter, boosted by positive results in its Vision Fund investments.
Tokyo-based SoftBank Group Corp. reported Tuesday a fiscal second quarter profit of nearly 1.18 trillion yen ($7.7 billion), compared with a 931 billion yen loss in the year-earlier period.
Quarterly sales edged up about 6% to nearly 1.77 trillion yen ($11.5 billion).
SoftBank credited income from royalties and licensing related to its holdings in Arm, a computer chip-designing company, whose business spans smartphones, data centers, networking equipment, automotive, consumer electronic devices, and AI applications.
The results were also helped by the absence of losses related to SoftBank’s investment in office-space sharing venture WeWork, which hit the previous fiscal year.
WeWork, which filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in 2023, emerged from Chapter 11 in June.
SoftBank has benefitted in recent months from rising share prices in some investment, such as U.S.-based e-commerce company Coupang, Chinese mobility provider DiDi Global and Bytedance, the Chinese developer of TikTok.
SoftBank’s financial results tend to swing wildly, partly because of its sprawling investment portfolio that includes search engine Yahoo, Chinese retailer Alibaba, and artificial intelligence company Nvidia.
SoftBank makes investments in a variety of companies that it groups together in a series of Vision Funds.
The company’s founder, Masayoshi Son, is a pioneer in technology investment in Japan. SoftBank Group does not give earnings forecasts.
Shopify Inc. executives brushed off concerns that incoming U.S. President Donald Trump will be a major detriment to many of the company’s merchants.
“There’s nothing in what we’ve heard from Trump, nor would there have been anything from (Democratic candidate) Kamala (Harris), which we think impacts the overall state of new business formation and entrepreneurship,” Shopify’s chief financial officer Jeff Hoffmeister told analysts on a call Tuesday.
“We still feel really good about all the merchants out there, all the entrepreneurs that want to start new businesses and that’s obviously not going to change with the administration.”
Hoffmeister’s comments come a week after Trump, a Republican businessman, trounced Harris in an election that will soon return him to the Oval Office.
On the campaign trail, he threatened to impose tariffs of 60 per cent on imports from China and roughly 10 per cent to 20 per cent on goods from all other countries.
If the president-elect makes good on the promise, many worry the cost of operating will soar for companies, including customers of Shopify, which sells e-commerce software to small businesses but also brands as big as Kylie Cosmetics and Victoria’s Secret.
These merchants may feel they have no choice but to pass on the increases to customers, perhaps sparking more inflation.
If Trump’s tariffs do come to fruition, Shopify’s president Harley Finkelstein pointed out China is “not a huge area” for Shopify.
However, “we can’t anticipate what every presidential administration is going to do,” he cautioned.
He likened the uncertainty facing the business community to the COVID-19 pandemic where Shopify had to help companies migrate online.
“Our job is no matter what comes the way of our merchants, we provide them with tools and service and support for them to navigate it really well,” he said.
Finkelstein was questioned about the forthcoming U.S. leadership change on a call meant to delve into Shopify’s latest earnings, which sent shares soaring 27 per cent to $158.63 shortly after Tuesday’s market open.
The Ottawa-based company, which keeps its books in U.S. dollars, reported US$828 million in net income for its third quarter, up from US$718 million in the same quarter last year, as its revenue rose 26 per cent.
Revenue for the period ended Sept. 30 totalled US$2.16 billion, up from US$1.71 billion a year earlier.
Subscription solutions revenue reached US$610 million, up from US$486 million in the same quarter last year.
Merchant solutions revenue amounted to US$1.55 billion, up from US$1.23 billion.
Shopify’s net income excluding the impact of equity investments totalled US$344 million for the quarter, up from US$173 million in the same quarter last year.
Daniel Chan, a TD Cowen analyst, said the results show Shopify has a leadership position in the e-commerce world and “a continued ability to gain market share.”
In its outlook for its fourth quarter of 2024, the company said it expects revenue to grow at a mid-to-high-twenties percentage rate on a year-over-year basis.
“Q4 guidance suggests Shopify will finish the year strong, with better-than-expected revenue growth and operating margin,” Chan pointed out in a note to investors.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 12, 2024.
TORONTO – RioCan Real Estate Investment Trust says it has cut almost 10 per cent of its staff as it deals with a slowdown in the condo market and overall pushes for greater efficiency.
The company says the cuts, which amount to around 60 employees based on its last annual filing, will mean about $9 million in restructuring charges and should translate to about $8 million in annualized cash savings.
The job cuts come as RioCan and others scale back condo development plans as the market softens, but chief executive Jonathan Gitlin says the reductions were from a companywide efficiency effort.
RioCan says it doesn’t plan to start any new construction of mixed-use properties this year and well into 2025 as it adjusts to the shifting market demand.
The company reported a net income of $96.9 million in the third quarter, up from a loss of $73.5 million last year, as it saw a $159 million boost from a favourable change in the fair value of investment properties.
RioCan reported what it says is a record-breaking 97.8 per cent occupancy rate in the quarter including retail committed occupancy of 98.6 per cent.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 12, 2024.
