economy
WORKING FROM WHERE? Of the many things we’ve learned over the past two and a half years, one is that the traditional workplace has evolved. Many of us were forced to adapt our practices and work from home, in makeshift office set-ups, as the world changed around us. As restrictions were lifted and the cliched “back-to-normal” appearing ever-closer, there has been a healthy debate over what a return to the office would look like. For some, a home should just be a home, for others the home is the preferred workspace; and for others still the home is one part of the flexibility of a hybrid system. And while there likely won’t be a consensus anytime soon, the majority of Canadians are already back to their pre-Covid places of work (whether they were able to work from home or not).
Nationally, 57% of workers are not currently able to work from home at all, with the remaining split evenly between being able to work up to a few days per week at home and those able to work almost every workday at home. There is, however, a sizeable geographic variation at hand, with 52% of respondents in British Columbia and Ontario not able to work from home versus 73% in Manitoba/Saskatchewan and Atlantic Canada. Issues of housing affordability may be at play here, as employers in Vancouver and Toronto offer their employees more flexibility in where they work and therefore have more flexibility in where they live. Or perhaps the tighter labour market in BC has employers offering more incentives to their employees than their counterparts in other provinces. Whatever the reasons, the place-of-work conversation will continue to be had in offices and in homes for the foreseeable future.
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