Canadians don't want to go back to the office, preferring to work from home
A new study shows that more and more employers are switching to a hybrid work model after the pandemic lockdown experience.
According to a recent study by commercial real estate services firm Colliers Canada, the great experiment of finding the golden mean between employees working from home and returning to the office is now in full swing.
Nearly three years after the first pandemic-related lockdown, more and more offices are switching to a hybrid work model — when employees work part of their work week from home and part at the office.
But the study also shows that many employers, commercial real estate owners and even some office workers are still in deep thought and still can't come to terms with the established order.
"Obviously, we live in an age of hybrid work. There is no doubt that significant structural changes are taking place before our eyes. The ratio of time spent by employees at home to time spent in the office is changing," Colliers Canada said in a report. — But companies are still experimenting. There are several other important issues that have not been adequately addressed. Two of the biggest ones are productivity and culture".
More than half of the companies surveyed say they don't really know what to do. They're not entirely sure whether to let people continue to work from home. If we feel something has gone wrong, we'll start thinking about how to get employees back into the office," they say.
Another thing is that employees themselves are not so eager to return to the classic work mode. 80 percent of employees who switched to home work during the pandemic would rather quit than return to their previous office work mode.
90 percent of respondents believe that they do exactly the same amount of work at home as they do in the office.
To lure employees back to the offices, many companies go to all sorts of tricks, ranging from gourmet meals to giant gyms. One company even put on a contemporary art exhibit. They think employees who have worked in their bedroom or basement for three years will want to come to an state-of-the-art facility.
While most employees prefer to work from home, companies continue to insist that they spend some time in the office. But, as the study's authors point out, employers will have to come up with some better explanation for their desires than the classic "I just want you to stay in the office".
