The Half-Day Gap: What RTO Data Reveals About Retention Risk

jrezvani
Oct 9
4 min read

The pandemic-era promise of permanent remote work has quietly faded. Across Canada, offices are filling up again, commutes are lengthening and employers are drawing lines in the sand about where work happens. But beneath the headlines about return-to-office mandates lies a more complex story, one that every HR leader needs to understand.

Let's look at what the data actually tells us.

The Numbers: Commuting Is the New Normal (Again)

The number of employed Canadians commuting to work rose for the fourth year in a row, reaching 82.6% in May 2025, up 1.3 percentage points from May 2024. Four consecutive years of increases isn't a blip - it's a trend.

But here's where it gets interesting. Hybrid job postings grew from 15% in Q2 2023 to 28% of new jobs in Q2 2025. So while more people are commuting, hybrid work hasn't disappeared, it's just not the dominant model many predicted it would become.

Currently, 76% of Canadian employers are mandating employees return to the office partially or full time, citing productivity, team communication and workplace culture as key drivers.

The message is clear: remote-first is no longer the default.

Why Are Employers Mandating RTO?

Organizations point to several business reasons for bringing employees back. Productivity, team communication and workplace culture are the key drivers behind return-to-office mandates. These are legitimate operational concerns that many leadership teams are grappling with.

However, the motivations aren't always purely operational. Nearly 40% of managers believe their organization did layoffs because not enough workers quit in response to their company's RTO mandate. More strikingly, a quarter of bosses admit return-to-office mandates were meant to make staff quit.

This reveals a uncomfortable truth: some RTO policies are workforce reduction strategies in disguise.

The Retention Paradox

Here's where the data gets complicated for employers banking on RTO as a strategy.

42% of companies with enforced return-to-office mandates experienced higher employee attrition than expected. That's a significant miscalculation. Nearly half of organizations with strict policies saw more departures than they anticipated.

The quality of those departures matters too. Businesses imposing stricter RTO rules lose some of their most valuable and hard to replace employees. High performers (the employees you can least afford to lose) often have the most options and the lowest tolerance for inflexible policies.

The Half-Day That Changes Everything

Perhaps the most revealing finding: Data from October 2025 showed a persistent half-day weekly gap between what employees want for remote work and what employers offer; a minimal result on the surface, but experts explain this small difference has huge consequences for employers.

Half a day. On the surface, that seems negligible. But that single day difference, say two days remote versus three, can be the deciding factor in whether a valued employee stays or starts looking.

It's not about the time itself. It's about autonomy, trust and whether an organization is willing to meet employees partway.

The Economic Context

Workplace policies don't exist in a vacuum. Average one-bedroom rents were $2,317 in Toronto and $2,536 in Vancouver as of April 2025, with North Vancouver even higher at $2,680. For employees who relocated during the pandemic or moved further from city centers to afford housing, RTO mandates carry real financial consequences.

From a macro perspective, returning to the office isn't the answer to Canada's productivity problem, and it will add pressure to already overheated housing markets. This suggests the productivity case for RTO may be more complex than simple "people work better when watched" assumptions.

What Major Employers Are Doing

Ontario Public Service

Ontario is ordering public servants back into the office full time starting in January, with surveys suggesting employees are 'upset' about the return to office and prefer flexible work. This represents one of the most significant RTO mandates in the Canadian public sector.

Banking Sector

RBC announced it will require employees to return to the office four days a week starting in September 2025. TD, BMO and other major Canadian banks have followed similar paths, establishing a four-day standard for the financial services industry. These moves by large, prominent employers set tone and create benchmarks that ripple across industries.

What This Means for HR Strategy

The data points to several considerations for organizations evaluating their workplace policies:

Track Your Own Data

General trends matter, but your specific retention patterns matter more. Are you losing people after implementing or tightening RTO policies? If so, who are you losing and can you afford to lose them?

Understand the Talent Market

With 28% of job postings now offering hybrid arrangements, candidates have options. Your policy is competing with other employers' policies in the talent marketplace.

Measure What You're Optimizing For

If productivity, collaboration or culture drove your RTO decision, are you tracking whether those metrics actually improved? Assumptions about in-office effectiveness need validation.

Consider the Half-Day Effect

That half-day gap between what employees want and what you offer may seem small, but it could be disproportionately affecting retention. Is the rigidity worth the cost?

Communication Matters

If a quarter of bosses admit return-to-office mandates were meant to make staff quit, employees are increasingly suspicious of RTO motivations. Transparent communication about the "why" builds trust - or at least prevents erosion of it.

The Bottom Line

82.6% of Canadians are commuting again. Remote work didn’t replace in-person work; it redefined its role. We're settling into a new equilibrium, one where most people work in offices most of the time, some flexibility exists for some workers and rigid mandates carry real retention risks.

For HR leaders, the path forward isn't about choosing a side in the RTO debate. It's about understanding your workforce, your business needs and the trade-offs involved in every policy decision.

The data is clear. What you do with it is up to you.

Want to discuss how these trends apply to your organization? Let's talk.