While thousands of government workers are facing return-to-office mandates, many local tech companies are stocking the fridge, booking caterers and finding other ways to encourage employees to spend at least some time in the office. <\/p>\n
While thousands of government workers are facing return-to-office mandates, many local tech companies are stocking the fridge, booking caterers and finding other ways to encourage employees to spend at least some time in the office.\u00a0<\/p>\n
While it may harken back to the days of foosball tables and fully stocked bars, it\u2019s all part of investing in office spaces and company cultures to make employees want to show up. Tech executives say the strategy is reshaping how they lead their teams and recruit new employees.<\/p>\n
At Fullscript, chief business officer Dennis Richter says the digital-health company\u2019s policy, \u201cwherever you work well,\u201d leaves attendance decisions entirely to employees. In fact, he says, it\u2019s the one question that surfaces almost every time he interviews candidates.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve interviewed tons of people and you know the No. 1 thing that comes up in conversations? They almost always ask us, \u2018How often do people come into the office?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Richter says the answer is never a mandate, but creating conditions for connection rather than forcing people to connect.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cYou don\u2019t have to mandate,\u201d he says. \u201cWhat you have to do is lead by example and leaders need to be the ones coming into the office. When you make it about not forcing the fun, people are more inclined to come in.\u201d<\/p>\n
The culture at Fullscript\u2019s Ottawa offices develops without company direction, Richter explains. Employees organize group food orders from local restaurants and gather for Ottawa Senators watch parties on the office\u2019s big screen.<\/p>\n
\u201cNone of those things are company-driven,\u201d Richter says. \u201cWe never get up there and say come do this or you have to do that. It\u2019s just something that gets brought up and kind of just spreads around.\u201d<\/p>\n
Knak takes a similar approach. Zak Michalyshyn is the senior talent acquisition lead at the Ottawa email marketing software company. He says the goal is to make coming to the office attractive, with such things as a ping-pong table, bubble hockey, arcade machines and a driving simulator.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThat one\u2019s probably got people engaged the most because there\u2019s a little competition,\u201d he says of the simulator, which includes a monthly leaderboard. \u201cThey\u2019ll pick a car and a lap time every month and there\u2019s a kind of scoreboard where people are trying to get the best lap time.\u201d<\/p>\n
Every Tuesday, Knak brings in bagels from Kettlemans Bagel. Every Wednesday, the office serves a catered lunch from a rotating selection of local restaurants. Leftovers often keep employees coming back on Thursdays, according to Michalyshyn.\u00a0<\/p>\n
When employee surveys identified meeting room shortages as one of the biggest deterrents to coming in, Knak renovated its space to add more dedicated quiet rooms equipped with monitors for focused work.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Michalyshyn also says Knak now hires closer to home than it used to. Roles that would have been posted as fully remote during the pandemic, now carry an Ottawa preference.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve been focused a little bit more on certain roles being in Ottawa where we feel like there\u2019s an opportunity to get certain cross-functional partners together on a more regular basis,\u201d he says.\u00a0<\/p>\n
He recently placed one of the company\u2019s new sales positions in Ottawa for this reason. \u201cWe see the value in our sales team that\u2019s here being able to walk over to that person\u2019s desk and ask a question, rather than slacking and waiting for an answer,\u201d he explains.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Things are done a little differently at Solink. Grace Barbosa-Chin, a people and culture leader at the Kanata video security software company, says she thinks about office perks in terms of personal growth.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cFor me what really matters in terms of a perk is how do we help up-level a team member?\u201d she says. \u201cHow do we grow their career? And for us, something that\u2019s really important is that mentorship piece.\u201d<\/p>\n
Solink\u2019s go-to-market team works under a formal office mandate. Business development representatives come in five days a week. Account executives are expected three days a week. An open concept layout reinforces the mentorship goal, Barbosa-Chin says. Candidates ask less about tangible perks and more about career trajectory.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI think people right now really care about how they can grow in their career and how we can support them,\u201d she said. \u201cI think there are a lot of pros of being in office that allow for that support. And so that\u2019s what we tend to lean on when we speak on those perks.\u201d<\/p>\n
Solink recently expanded its Ottawa headquarters to accommodate go-to-market team growth and opened a Toronto office. Barbosa-Chin estimates about 50 per cent of the workforce comes into an office at least once a week. The expectation to show up runs from entry level to the top of the organization.\u00a0<\/p>\n
She says the company\u2019s CEO leads by example. \u201cMike (Matta) is in office if he can be every single day,\u201d she explains. \u201cI think that\u2019s what made him a really fantastic founder and leader. You\u2019re actually able to get face time with him. You can see him in the office if you have something on your mind. He\u2019s always accessible.\u201d<\/p>\n
Other tech companies in Ottawa are finding their own versions of the same formula. Kanata-based Kinaxis gives all employees the last Friday of every month off in a program called K-Days, alongside unlimited paid vacation and a Christmas to New Year company shutdown.<\/p>\n
Noibu, a downtown Ottawa e-commerce monitoring company, serves free lunches on Tuesdays and bagels on Thursdays and lets employees take extended breaks through a \u201c90-day away\u201d policy.<\/p>\n
Assent, the supply chain software company, rebuilt its office around the reality that most employees would not be there every day. According to a case study by The Globe and Mail, the company cut its desk count from 350 to 180 and replaced large conference rooms with huddle areas and Zoom booths.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Kanata-based AI energy management company BluWave-ai has a \u201cwork your way\u201d philosophy for employees and free electric vehicle charging at the company\u2019s headquarters.\u00a0<\/p>\n
At Fullscript, Richter says ordering workers into the office without offsetting their costs puts the burden in the wrong place.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cNow you\u2019ve got train expenses, bus expenses, fuel and parking expenses,\u201d he says. \u201cAll of these other expenses that the business, nine out of 10 times, is not offsetting any of those. Not to mention time lost.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you just say, \u2018We\u2019re coming back to the office\u2019 and then three months later everybody\u2019s asking, \u2018Okay, so what\u2019s gotten better?\u2019 and nobody knows, then (employees) get even more frustrated,\u201d Richter says. \u201cAnd then you start to lose your best talent.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"While thousands of government workers are facing return-to-office mandates, many local tech companies are stocking the fridge, booking…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":695484,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194295],"tags":[49,48,20739],"class_list":["post-695483","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ottawa","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-ottawa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/695483","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=695483"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/695483\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/695484"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=695483"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=695483"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=695483"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}