The Current - What it’s going to take to get Canadians back to the office?

Episode Date: September 5, 2025

Major Canadian employers are investing in fancy office spaces and paying a premium to get in-demand workers back to in-person work.  But many workers still aren't sold on getting out of their pajamas and into hard pants . We hear from a commercial real estate expert about rising demand for top tier office spaces, and a recruiter who says major employers are paying top dollar for experienced staff — if they will come to work in person.

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This is a CBC podcast. Hello, I'm Matt Galloway, and this is the current podcast. Well, the kids are back at school this week, and for many workers in Toronto's Financial District, it's also back to the office. It feels good. You get to move out of the house, meet new people, walk around in the downtown.

It's always a good feeling. I personally like it because I live very close, and it makes me come outside of my place, basically. It's nice, actually. You know, we can show off all the dresses we have gone. come to office. It's nice. At least thrice a week is really welcoming. I do think that there is an inherent advantage of being in the office. And I might be old school, might be from a different generation that grew up in the office versus, you know, the younger kids these days, if you

will. I do think it's a positive thing. Four of Canada's major banks have announced that workers will be expected back in the office four days a week. For Ontario government workers, it's five days a week. And many other big employers are following suit. At lunch hour, the food courts under the office towers are hopping, but not everyone is happy to be there. I think if there is more flexibility, it's something that, like, my team would prefer. Because we are more technical than business, and we don't really meet that much collines. So a lot of my coworkers also live in very far-way cities, and that could be a problem for them. So if there is any improvement in transportation, or maybe if, like, the housing rate is getting better, it would be very nice for them.

I'm feeling like it's not the best decision for people's work-life balance. The city grew a lot in the last five years since COVID started, and our infrastructure is not able to accommodate everybody being back. Yeah, it just feels like we're going back at least over a decade back in time. You know, we have all the infrastructure to work from home. There's no need for us to be in office when we're not customer-facing. Let us work from home and save the roads for people who need to commute. A survey by Angus Reed shows close to 80% of Canadians would prefer at least some remote work.

So how are employers luring them back to the office and keeping them happy? I'm joined by two people with insight into that. Natalie Casson is president of Casson recruitment. She specializes in helping companies hire accountants. And Nick Kendrew is senior vice president at Collier's Toronto. It's a commercial real estate broker. They are both with me in studio, not joining us remotely. Good morning to you both.

Good morning. The real mixed bag there, Natalie, in terms of how people are responding in the food courts to being called back into the office. This is a hot topic across the country. What are you hearing from clients and from job candidates about the return to office mandates? It's definitely a mixed bag, I would say. Most of the candidates I talk to are looking for some sort of flexibility in their work. But employers at the same time, they are mandating stricter return to work. return to work policies. So I would say, though, every time this happens, I get more emails in my inbox. So that tends to be a good thing for me at least. What does it mean in terms of

staff turnover, do you think? I mean, a lot of people will say, I don't want to come back into the office. I'm going to find something else to do. But is that realistic? Is that actually what's unfolding right now? I think the tough thing is that a lot of employers in the same industry are making more stricter policies at the same time. So it's not going to be necessary. very easy to find another role that is completely remote. Because everybody's in the same boat. Because everyone's in the same boat. That's right. So I'm not seeing a ton of remote options for people anymore.

Nick, it's interesting. Hearing from those employees in the food court, they're under those towers that were hollowed out for the last few years during the pandemic. People were musing about turning some of those big towers into, possibly into housing. That seems to be over and done with. What are you hearing about how this impacts commercial real estate? Yeah, I mean, I think really to be an office landlord for the last five years, it's been quite a rough period. And, you know, from multiple sides, you know, your leasing efforts might not be good, your rent might go down.

And also, a lot of lenders, banks, they don't want to lend on office buildings. So that's a tougher environment. So really the fact that most of these banks and the Ontario government have announced together, that's the news they've been waiting for. And I'd say this is probably one of the strongest turning points in my 20-year office career. I mean, some of those clients had looked at shrinking their footprints, right, in terms of they don't need all the space because people were working from home. What happens now if people are coming back? So we're seeing so many companies shrank their footprints during the pandemic

and during the last couple of years when they thought that maybe they could keep hybrid policies going for longer. Many of those big organizations are actually proactively out there now looking to lock down some of the best possible space in the downtown Toronto area. And so we're seeing that reflected in the vacancy rate for some of the AAA top quality assets in Toronto. I want to come back to that in terms of which buildings are being occupied. If employees don't want to come back, Natalie, how much of a premium do companies have to pay or do they have to pay any? a premium at all to get them back into the office? Are the things that they have to do, things that they can dangle in front of them? I think for the most part, it does come down to salary, but a lot of times that's still not

enough. I had a candidate last week who had multiple job offers in front of them. One was 10K more and was in office, and the other one was hybrid and a little bit closer to the office and honestly had probably a better career introduction for them, but they still went with the, yeah, the remote one, or sorry, the hybrid one. And they were willing to take less money. They were willing to take less money, that's right. And is that a common thing?

The people are willing to perhaps take a bit of a haircut on the salary if they don't have to commute, if they can work from home, if they have the convenience of flexibility. Absolutely. When I'm talking to candidates on a regular basis, they seem to almost have two different salaries. So they have the salary that is for that in-office work that tends to be about, you know, 10K or almost sometimes 10% higher. And then they have the other salary where they're willing to be a little bit more flexible if they don't have to commute. So Nick, tell me more about the buildings here because there's research from your company that shows that the fanciest top tier.

What do you call them, the AAA? Yeah, AAA. Office buildings. Those are the ones that are most in demand right now. What is that about? So I think there's two factors to do with that. I think employers recognize that if they are going to ask their employees to come back to the office, that they want to provide them a very high quality. work environment to be in, that these buildings will have access to a food court, they will

be highly amenitized, so they might have a gym, they'll have bike storage, they'll have shower facilities, all the bells and whistles. The other thing that is coincidental, but I think it's also very important, most of those AAA bank towers are located within a five to ten minute walk from union stations. So it's easily, for people across the country who don't know that, it's easy to get around from a commuting hub. Exactly. I think employers are recognizing that the commute is probably one of the biggest barriers to getting people back in the office. So if they can reduce that burden, then they want to try and find space that will help them do that. What about making sure that there's space, we're going to talk more about this, but space for people

to actually work in the office. One of the things we're hearing is there's this idea of hot desking. You don't have a desk anymore. You have kind of a space that maybe you can claim if somebody else doesn't have it. People are showing up. All the spaces are claimed where are they supposed to work? How big of an issue is that? It's an issue. And I think what this goes back to again during the last two or three years when groups thought that maybe they could stay hybrid for a long period, they gave back a lot of their space. They didn't need it anymore. Yeah. They're paying for it and they weren't using it. And now they're asking people to come back in again, I've heard anecdotes about, you know, very big companies only having

one desk for every two employees. So I'm also hearing stories about people working from the cafeteria or even a black market for, you know, desk booking where people are finding way to kind of pay someone under their table to just allocate a desk to them frequently. How much of it that is a disincentive to the employees? that you're talking about the candidates, they don't want to come into the office because to the next point, they don't want to work in the cafeteria. No, absolutely. They don't want to work in the cafeteria. And I think that they also want to make sure that they're not only working at a desk, but they want to come in for true collaboration time. What does that mean?

So I think one of the big turnoffs for candidates is when they commute all the way in and they get there, and then they sit on Zoom calls. And I think that's a big right of play because they were sold, you know, you're going to have this great collaboration, you're going to have mentors, that will help you, you know, you're going to learn more. And then, you know, some of their team members are actually still working remotely and they sit at their desk and they're on Zoom calls. Or they're working in the same office, but they just are separate and still looking at a screen. Exactly.

You're sitting next to, like just down the hall from somebody, but you're not actually sitting in the same room as that. Exactly. So that tends to, I don't think they've fully worked it out yet. I think that there is a lot of thought that needs to go in to certain employers and how they're really going to have people come back to the office and truly be collaborative. A lot of news podcasts give you information, the basic facts of a story. What's different about your world tonight is that we actually take you there.

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I'm Susan Bonner. Host of Your World Tonight from CBC News. Find us wherever you get your podcasts. Nick, what's your sense? Has the pendulum swung back? I mean, is the era of hybrid or remote work? Is it truly done? Or is this kind of a cyclical thing where people are trying to figure this out? Because commercial real estate isn't cheap. The decisions that people are making are costly decisions and need to be made with some intention and with the long game in play. Definitely real estate is not cheap. However, as a line item for any big corporation, real estate is a lot cheaper than human resources and people. So I think this is something that I don't think necessarily the big organizations that have made the announcements, I don't think they've knee-jerked into it.

I think they're very serious about this. I do think that one of the things we are going to find is I think hoteling is going to retreat somewhat. The pendulum is going to swing back the other way. The other thing that we found was in 2010, the average square foot per employee was around 250 square feet per employee. That shrunk as down to as little as around 150 square feet per employee a year or two ago. And when you look at a survey of some of the top workplace strategists,

they actually think that that's going to start increasing a little more, that we will get more collaborative space in the office, that we need to, we can't, we can't demand that workers come back in and then give them a subpar experience once they're in the office. Last word to you, Natalie. What do you say, particularly to younger employees, I mean, about, are there really benefits? We're going to talk more about the evidence here, but from your perspective, are there benefits for younger employees in terms of being in the office with other people?

Absolutely. The training and the mentorship that you get in office is absolutely invaluable. You know, I'll look at specifically I recruit accountants. So I look at, you know, people who went through the CPA process fully remote during COVID. And at the end of the day, those accountants came out. And they're not as well equipped as the ones I talked to that were pre-COVID. And that's because they sat in an office, you know, one of the big four accounting offices, for example. And they sat beside someone who was doing the same job.

And they learned by asmosis. So it was quite easy just to, you know, learn the things you didn't even know you needed to learn by sitting next to someone. And, you know, when you're working remotely, you know, you have to carve out time to ask your manager questions. You can't just, you know, easily go to someone next to you and ask a question about a file that you're working on. You wonder whether that sticks, whether that idea sticks with a younger employee who perhaps is not as keen on coming into the office. I mean, I would say, even when I look at myself, I definitely would not be where I am today if I had not been in an

office. I know Nick and I were talking about this earlier as well. You know, we learned a lot by just, you know, being around colleagues doing the same job. So if you're, yeah, if you're working at home and you just don't have that insight next to you, your learning curve is definitely going to be slower. It's good to have you both in here. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. Natalie Kassan is president of Kassan recruitment. She specializes in helping companies hire accountants. Nick Kendrew is senior vice president at Colliers, Toronto, a commercial real estate broker. Bruce Daisley has held senior roles at Twitter and Google, now bestselling author on workplace culture. His newsletter is called Make Work Better. He hosts a podcast called

Eat, Sleep, Work, Repeat. Bruce, hello to you. Hello there. You will hear a lot of jargon from companies who are bringing employees back into the office. They'll talk about how this is going to build synergy. This is creating alignment. It will increase productivity. Is there evidence that shows that there is a greater value for in-person work versus remote work? I think you hit on one of the issues that prevents this, actually, and it's often the issue that organizations have tried to make an economic saving by reducing the size of their office. And so frequently, while there might be a benefit in going in and sitting next to the same colleagues every day

and building a rapport, building a connection, building a sense of cohesion, Quite often our experience of work is travelling in, struggling to find anywhere to see it, finding that we don't really see anyone we know. And it's closer to college library than it is a sense of sort of being in a locker room around teammate. And I think that's the challenge. While there might be a benefit of face-to-face contact, and the evidence seems to suggest that there is some benefit of that. And most of us aren't in the position that we're experiencing much of it right now. When we went out to talk to people in the financial district, it was women who tended to be the ones most upset about having to come into the office. That's a small sample size, obviously.

But is there a gendered component to this in terms of who would feel that they're being squeezed more by having to come in? Yeah, most definitely. while we might be reluctant to admit it, domestic responsibilities still fall disproportionately on women. We see that when people travel into the office, effectively they're losing about an hour and 10 minutes a day in terms of the additional travel time. And what that tends to do is it just tends to turn the screw on our domestic pressures. That extra time means that we then, a sort of plain catch-up, we've got food to cook or food to. to buy and care responsibilities. One in ten of us have a responsibility towards parents, let alone children or pets. And so, yeah, absolutely the trouble to work often finds workers

feeling that it's not necessarily something that yields a benefit to them. They feel that they can do their job as effectively at home. But it's the additional pressures that commuting causes. They often make our lives just that degree more stressful. Do we know whether they're able to do their job as effectively at home, though? This is the reason why employers want to bring people in. There is a myth, belief, whatever you want to call it, that those who are working from home are not working as hard as those who might be in the office under the eyes of the boss.

That's right. The economists did a pretty rigorous analysis on this last year, and they said that broadly productivity was give or take about the same. They said productivity at home was about 2 or 3% lower than productivity at work, broadly the same, but they said that the happiness that working from home produces that sort of reduction in the stress, the reduction in the burnout, was worth the benefit of it. So I think broadly it's a toss-up, which is more productive. We might say that there is some benefit, some additive benefit,

a feeling a sense of connectedness with our colleagues. Whether you need to do that five days a week, I think is pretty moot. But the challenge is that most organisations aren't necessarily optimising for, that. Time in the office doesn't necessarily look particularly different to time at home. We're not dialing up face-to-face connection. We're not having lunch with colleagues. And so it's why the majority of workers are feeling like flexibility is something that they would, as we've heard before, they would opt to take less pay to have more flexibility because it's got such a perceived benefit for them. Can you just talk briefly about that piece that Natalie mentioned, and particularly for

younger workers. There's this idea that the culture exists in between things. The creativity may not be in those meetings, whether they're on Zoom or in person, but it's it's the moments in between when you can lean over a desk and talk to somebody, you run into somebody and something happens. Is that a real thing? Culture living in the gaps between things is probably one of the the clearest understandings we've got about teamwork and team bonding. And we see really lovely evidence on these workers who are able to have lunch together or have a coffee break together tend to have greater trust for each other. They tend to have a stronger sense of emotional connection. So that's most definitely true. The question we might have is, are there many gaps left

between things now? One of the biggest changes to work in the last 10 years hasn't necessarily been the question of where we do our work, but more what work looks like. And the amount of time we spend in meetings has trebled in the last six years. That, I think, has a bigger impact on the experience of work. For a lot of us, we find ourselves going from one meeting, whether it's a virtual meeting on teams or whether it's an in-person meeting, we go from one meeting to another. And it's created this sense that work is very crushed. It's very condensed. It's very intense. Work intensification is one of the things that we've definitely observed in the data. And it just has the overall experience of making work feel a little less personalized, a little less human.

So I would say that that's one of the bigger issues that we need to resolve, how we reduce this meeting inflation, reduce the amount of time we're spending, just sitting in meetings with each other. Meeting inflation. I have to let you go, but just in a word or two, do you think these return to office mandates are going to stick? Broadly, the evidence seems to suggest that organizations that are demanding work, work returns, return to office, they tend to grow more slowly. They tend to have problems retaining their best employees. So I think it is quite a regressive act. Probably, we have to accept that the future of work probably doesn't look like returning to 2019. We need to do something a bit more imaginative. Bruce, good to speak with you.

Thank you very much. Bruce Daisley is a best-selling author, host of the podcast, Eat, Sleep, Work, Repeat, also publishes a newsletter called Make Work Better. You've been listening to the current podcast. My name is Matt Galloway. Thanks for listening. I'll talk to you soon. For more CBC podcasts, go to cbc.ca.

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