The CEO of one of Canada’s largest institutional investors didn’t mince words Wednesday when talking about the recent push by some corporate leaders to order employees back to the office full time. “I’m amazed, frankly, at how many deaf, white male CEOs say ‘you need to go back to the office.’ I think they’re asking for fights with their employees,” said Evan Siddall, head of Alberta Investment Management Corp. (AIMCo) and former CEO of Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation. “I think there’s been a relatively permanent shift.” Siddall made the comments Wednesday during an interview in Calgary, where he attended the opening of AIMCo’s new office in the city. AIMCo — which is responsible for pension, endowment and sovereign wealth investments in Alberta, with $163.8 billion in assets under management at the end of last year — has about 600 employees spread across offices in Edmonton, Calgary, Toronto, London , United Kingdom and Luxembourg. Since the lifting of the COVID-19 pandemic restrictions, these workers have been able to decide within their individual groups how often they want to come to the physical office — with the company suggesting two days a week as the “starting point” for this conversation, but there are no fixed rules for this purpose. “Our philosophy at AIMCo is that we are all adults,” Siddall said. “Where you do this work doesn’t matter. There are certain orthodoxies around culture where people say, “you can only maintain a culture if people are in the office full time.” I just don’t agree with that.” For Canada’s employees and employers, the pandemic has been a multi-year experiment in flexible, remote work. This September has put some bosses and workers at odds with a new push by some companies to bring employees back into office buildings. And instead of the voluntary return-to-the-office guidelines that characterized earlier parts of the pandemic, many employers are now mandating office attendance through company policies. Those policies make little sense at a time when companies are still struggling with ongoing labor shortages, high turnover rates and the much-discussed “quiet shutdown” phenomenon, Siddall said. “By the way, our turnover — it’s higher than it was because of COVID — but we’re outperforming our peers because we have a different offering for employees. And that’s how they stay,” he said. “We think it’s actually made us an employer of choice and enabled us to recruit some amazing people that we otherwise wouldn’t have been able to hire.” Siddall said he is well aware that different demographics have different needs and preferences about where they do their work. Immigrants and culturally diverse populations, for example, are more likely to have older family members aging in their homes, while young families face particular challenges around childcare. “Large family units or if you have elderly parents or young children … it’s a different lifestyle and now we can welcome those people and expand our talent pool,” he said. This report by The Canadian Press was first published on September 21, 2022.
