Parents with young children are more likely to have hybrid work arrangements or work exclusively from home, a new Statistics Canada report has found.
This was the case for three in 10 parents (30.1 per cent) with at least one child five-years-old or younger during November, it said, including 33.2 per cent of mothers and 27.4 per cent of fathers.
In comparison, Stat Can says 23. 5 per cent of workers without a child five years or younger had a hybrid work arrangement or worked entirely from home.
“The prevalence of specific work arrangements can reflect a range of factors, including industry and occupational composition, and the specific circumstances of employers and workers,” the November jobs report published Friday said. “However, working from home and hybrid work can be appealing to parents, due to the time saved from commuting and the greater prevalence of flexible schedules.”
Hybrid arrangements are a part of the transition many offices are adopting following COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns that led to a large part of the workforce operating exclusively from home. Working hybrid includes working some hours at home and some outside of the home.
Statistics Canada says the share of workers with hybrid arrangements has more than tripled since the 3.6 per cent rate in January 2022, reaching 11.7 per cent in November 2023.
After becoming a norm during the pandemic, the share of workers who work exclusively from home has gradually declined since the winter of 2022, Stat Can notes. The rate fell to 12.6 per cent in November 2023 from 24.3 per cent in January 2022.
In comparison, the share of workers who indicated working from a location other than their home remained approximately the same since August of this year, at approximately 76 per cent. However, this is up from the 72.1 per cent reported in January 2022.
Nearly 80 per cent of Canadian employees surveyed by the Angus Reid Institute for Cisco Canada in February said hybrid work positively impacted their work-life balance, while the same proportion also said flexible work policies directly affect their decision to stay in or leave their job.
Meanwhile, offices are doing a lot of incentivizing to lure employees back.
Sherri Rabinovitch, an HR expert in Montreal and owner of The People Guru, says offices are throwing in reimbursements for public transit, parking stipends and meal vouchers among other perks, but many workers are pushing back.
“Many people have changed their entire lifestyle (in) the last three and a half years and now to force people to switch back, I have seen a lot of resistance to that,” she told Global News in an interview in August.
— with files from Global News’ Saba Aziz.