Why we’re still discussing hybrid work

As RTO mandates ramp up for government and financial sector workers, one thing is certain: the talk about where work is being done just won’t go away

IMAGINE FOR A moment you are a time traveller visiting from the year 2021. You take life in and say something like, “Things sure are a little weird around here, but hey — we have hybrid work settled, right?”

Ah, nope.

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Every year for the past however many, someone makes a prediction that this will be the year we stop caring about where people work. Case in point, The Globe and Mail over this past weekend: “In 2026, companies will offer access to multiple work locations, giving teams more autonomy over when and where they work.”

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Sure. Yet here we are, heading full force into the 2026 work year with little settled on hybrid work.

“Canadian workers remain divided,” wrote a summary of a report by 2727 Coworking. “Polling shows roughly 45 to 57 per cent support for retaining a few mandated office days, but a similar share oppose full returns.” People themselves are torn, the report noted. “Teleworkers often have better work-life balance and less commuting stress, but many also crave in-person collaboration for social and developmental benefits.”

It is largely the public sector driving the current RTO push — Ontario civil servants are heading back in five days a week, and the rumour is federal civil servants soon will, too — along with several major banks that upped their in-office mandate to four days.

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So, the thing to watch will be whether the private sector follows or shrugs.

Younger and more diverse companies in general haven’t made much noise about RTO for a while, and many organizations have settled into a suitable hybrid arrangement for their given operation. However, if the signal coming from the public sector says it’s acceptable to order everyone back into the office again, we might see more of a push on the private side as well.

Conversely, there are bits and bobs of reports from sectors like professional services and educational administration where organizations had previously mandated everyone back in full-time. In some cases, it appears they simply slide back into a hybrid state without much fanfare. For RTO, it could be that ‘quiet loosening’ becomes a thing in 2026. Kieran Delamont