Within days of the pandemic’s arrival, old monitors were hauled out of basements and transformed into home workstations. Partners negotiated laptop space at the kitchen table, while others staged bookcase and plant backdrops for daily video calls.
For the dozen or so employees at Edmonton-based Punchcard Systems, those first weeks required creating new communication habits that would replicate the collaboration they had at their downtown office. The company rushed to implement systems that streamlined teamwork and automated routine processes.
Five years later, while many professionals from Victoria to St. John’s now split their time between commutes and home offices, Punchcard — which builds custom software, apps and digital tools — has made remote work permanent. The team has grown to more than 50 people spread across Canada, and the company has closed its centralized headquarters in Edmonton.
“March 2020 changed the parameters for all of us and became a real inflection point for our organization,” said Sam Jenkins, Punchcard’s managing partner. “Once we accepted a distributed model, we were careful not to create a two-tier workforce. Bringing some staff back to a single office would have been unfair to our remote employees.”
How working from home came to be in Canada
As the five-year pandemic anniversary approaches, businesses and employees are still negotiating the right blend of on-site and work-from-home arrangements. Factors such as costs, productivity and morale push different organizations toward different solutions, and many have settled on hybrid models rather than fully remote or fully on-site approaches. There is no universal solution: parents juggling childcare, and leaders trying to cultivate a collaborative culture, face different trade-offs.
John Trougakos, professor of organizational behaviour and human resources management at the University of Toronto, calls one positive outcome of that difficult period the normalization of hybrid work — a pattern that was rare before 2020.
“The pandemic has fundamentally changed how we work,” said Trougakos. “Most office jobs can now incorporate hybrid arrangements, thanks to available technologies and growing comfort with them.”
A C.D. Howe Institute report released last September found that just over one-quarter of paid employees in Canada worked from home at least part of the week by the end of 2023. That is down from about 42% in spring 2020, but, Trougakos notes, the share of people primarily working from home today is still more than double the pre-COVID level.
Which companies allow employees to work from home in Canada
Those who continue working remotely tend to have higher education levels, be employed by larger organizations, and often have young children, according to Tammy Schirle, author of the C.D. Howe report and an economics professor at Wilfrid Laurier University. From an employer perspective, offering flexible work arrangements can help attract and retain productive employees who might otherwise seek more accommodating roles elsewhere.
The study also shows that remote work is more common in regions dominated by sectors such as finance, insurance, professional services and public administration — fields where office-based roles are prevalent.
Contrary to early concerns about declines in output, Trougakos says many employers have observed higher productivity when staff work from home. Employees report fewer interruptions than in open-plan offices, lower stress, fewer sick days and a positive effect from avoiding long commutes. “They tend to enjoy better work–life balance,” he added.
Jenkins admitted he initially feared that productivity and culture would suffer when Punchcard went fully remote. He found the opposite: remote work increased productivity because team members appreciated autonomy and the freedom to adopt schedules and workflows that suited them.
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Despite the apparent benefits, the future of remote and hybrid work is uncertain.
Remote work in the U.S.
In the United States, the push to return to the office has been more visible. Early in his presidency, Donald Trump directed federal departments to end remote work and require full-time, in-person attendance. Several major U.S. firms have followed suit, prompting questions about whether that trend will influence Canadian employers.
KPMG’s 2024 CEO outlook, surveying leaders across 11 markets including Canada, reported that 83% of surveyed CEOs expect a full return to office within three years. “The shift by large companies — Dell, Amazon, JPMorgan and government agencies — may encourage other executives to reevaluate their own policies,” said employment lawyer Andy Pushalik.
Remote work in Canada
Pushalik notes that Canadian employment law provides stronger protection against abrupt changes to fundamental job terms than U.S. law. Sudden requirements to work in-office full time could expose employers to constructive dismissal claims if employees were not given adequate notice or if the change effectively amounts to a termination without compensation.
That legal framework, along with employees’ taste for flexibility, makes a wholesale return to five-day office weeks less likely in Canada. “People have experienced the advantages of being connected anywhere thanks to technology,” Pushalik said. “The challenge now is to harness this new normal while maintaining collaboration and innovation in our workplaces.”
What remote work means for Canadian companies
For Punchcard, the permanent shift to remote work led to additional investment in digital tools and a reallocation of some cost savings into twice-yearly in-person retreats for social connection and professional development. With employees now located in cities ranging from Victoria and Vancouver to Calgary, Winnipeg and Toronto, Jenkins has no plans to require regular office attendance.
“People value face-to-face camaraderie, but they also appreciate being able to choose when and how they connect with colleagues,” he said. “That genie isn’t going back in the bottle.”
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