As return-to-office mandates sweep Canada, going remote or hybrid is a competitive advantage in talent acquisition, says one HR exec
The return-to-office (RTO) battle may be over. But for employers in a battle for top talent, it could lead to a competitive advantage.
Eighty-four per cent of new Canadian job postings in the second quarter of 2026 were for positions fully on-site, up from 63 per cent at the end of 2025, according to Robert Half Canada’s Demand for Skilled Talent report. Just 13 per cent offered hybrid arrangements and three per cent were fully remote. Yet a third of Canadian professionals surveyed say finding a role with greater remote flexibility is among their main reasons for changing jobs in the second half of 2026.
For organizations that have held the line on flexibility, that gap has become something else: a competitive edge, according to Courtney Cheyne, Vice President of People and Culture at Wagepoint, who is based in Vancouver.
What a remote-first hiring strategy actually looks like
Wagepoint, a Calgary-based payroll software provider for small businesses, is one of those organizations. The company has gone in the opposite direction from the RTO trend, operating fully remote for its approximately 175-person team. And the company is doubling down on that model in 2026, with plans to hire more than 45 remote roles nationwide, says Cheyne, who believes the hiring impact from this talent strategy is immediate.
“Our candidate pool and our talent pool is very broad,” says Cheyne. “And that’s actually one of our bigger challenges for our talent acquisition team – we’re receiving a significantly high volume of applicants.”
Because geography is irrelevant for the remote-first workforce, Cheyne says her organization draws from a talent pool that extends well beyond Canada’s major metropolitan centres – professionals in smaller cities, rural communities, and those for whom commuting carries real logistical or personal barriers.
“We don’t need to hire people who are near a certain hub,” she says. “So we really have the full breadth of folks across Canada, whether they’re more rural, in small towns, or have some kind of accessibility or family obligations that makes it harder for them to travel or make it into an office.”
The model has also unlocked a specialized sourcing advantage, says Cheyne. As RTO debates lead to some organizations seeing higher turnover and lower hiring rates, nationwide reach paired with domain expertise is proving a formidable combination.
“We have many technology-based roles, but product knowledge and industry-based knowledge is really important, so that's a talent strategy we really have to focus on,” says Cheyne. “A lot of payroll professionals would like to go in-house, but the ability to work remote does make them interested in Wagepoint as an option.”
The RTO trend leaves recruiting opportunities open
David Zweig, professor of organizational behaviour and HR management in the Department of Management at the University of Toronto Scarborough, has long argued that remote work lives or dies by labour market conditions.
“I think work-from-home is essentially done,” says Zweig. “If the labour market is tight, people will still be allowed to the option of working from home, but in a loose labour market like the one we have right now, there was no doubt in my mind then that employers would push for a return to office.”
Zweig also believes that productivity and collaboration aren’t driving the RTO push.
“It was mostly just about this illusion of control that leaders had that we needed to see people in person in the office as a measure of performance,” he says.
For organizations willing to hold a different view, Zweig sees an opportunity for flexibility to be a hiring and retention weapon. “It could be a very good recruitment tool for some organizations that are willing to understand that presence does not necessarily equal performance,” he says. “Giving people some of that autonomy actually can be very motivating and enhance commitment and engagement.”
Presence is not performance
The thread connecting both perspectives is one concept: physical presence isn’t a reliable measure of performance, and organizations treating it as one are making a strategic error.
“It’s a bit of an illusion of control that they’re using presence as a proxy for performance, and that’s driving a lot of the push to bring employees back to the office,” Zweig says.
From her view inside a fully remote organization, Cheyne agrees: “In an office you can kind of get away with looking busy, whereas you can’t really hide that in a remote environment,” she says. “It’s really about how well you deliver, the impact that you have, and good self-sufficiency and time management.”
Recruiting for ‘ownership mentality’
That philosophy shapes Cheyne’s organization’s hiring, filtering for what she calls an “ownership mentality” – the capacity to deliver and be accountable without external structure – and it carries through to performance management, which centres on clear expectations, regular one-on-ones, and open feedback, she says.
“Someone can only be successful in a remote environment when they have that kind of aptitude and attitude,” says Cheyne. “We do a lot to support an effective remote work practice and we really are intentional about how we build that, how we create clear expectations, and really lean on strong leaders to communicate those expectations and hold people accountable to them.”
Cheyne believes that in an environment where more and more employees are working on-site, HR and business leaders who shift their mindset can give themselves the edge in the competition for skilled talent, particularly when employees object to RTO mandates.
“The main fear leaders have with the RTO mandates is that they’re not in control, or there’s not enough visibility on people’s direction of work,” she says. “Whereas we feel like the openness that we are able to create and that trust is really what helps us avoid that.”
The risks behind the flexibility
Neither Cheyne nor Zweig suggest the case for remote and hybrid work is without friction. Cheyne says she recognizes the risks of a fully distributed environment.
“The drawbacks of remote work is that there can be more burnout,” says Cheyne. “Sometimes with flexibility, things might bleed into other times of the day, and you don’t have as much access to data – if you’re not seeing people all day, every day, it can be hard to notice the signs.”
Cheyne says her organization has invested in mental health resources and benefits in response, and built deliberate rituals – coffee chats, virtual social channels, and periodic in-person gatherings – to create the connection points that offices generate naturally.
With the Robert Half report showing more than eight in 10 new Canadian job postings now offering no flexibility, organizations willing to offer some level of it hold a genuine differentiator in talent acquisition, says Cheyne.
“Our leadership is really determined that you extend trust first in order to get trust in return, and we've given that attitude that really empowers our people and gives them a lot of autonomy,” she says. “And we position ourselves as being an employer of choice there – it surprises me how much people will do great work when you let them.”
