Cannacord Genuity and Bank of Montreal will require their employees to work in the office more often, starting this fall, The Globe and Mail reported.

Cannacord, an independent investment bank, will require its employees to work the entire five-day business week in the office. BMO has announced its intention to require employees to spend four days weekly on the bank’s premises. The mandate affects more than 1,000 Cannacord employees, according to the Globe.

The moves have widespread implications for Canada’s hard-hit office market, which has grappled with once unthinkable double-digit high vacancysince the COVID-19 pandemic began.

Cannaccord CEO Stuart Raftus told employees in an internal memo that the change will require adjustment and the bank wanted to give employees ample notice to re-establish routines and return to the rhythm of attending the office every day,” and cited a need to improve productivity, the Globe reported.

Cannacord and BMO are part of a recent trend that has seen Canadian financial services companies require employees to spend more time on the premises. Mark Fieder, president of Avison Young’s Canadian business, recently told Connect that financial-services firms’ efforts are driving a resurgence in Canada’s office sector, including leasing and repurposing efforts.

John Turley-Ewart, a regulatory-compliance consultant and banking historian welcomed the banks’ moves.

“It’s about time,” he wrote in a column in the Globe.

He contended that the work-from-home trend has not worked for banks or individual bankers.

“This slow walk back to five days in-person reflects an emerging consensus that remote work is a productivity killer,” he wrote. “It undermines common purpose in banking departments responsible for delivering and managing complex, highly regulated services and products to businesses, consumers and other stakeholders.

“In such work environments, effective collaboration is crucial to execution, sustaining a positive work culture and stamping out toxic work behaviours that undercut performance.”

Various academic journals have validated remote work’s negative impact on the banking sector and other industries, he noted.

Turley-Ewart called on banks to improve their offices following a shift to smaller, increasingly impersonal workspaces.

“In short, it defeats the purpose of being in the office,” he wrote.

For banks, he argued employees’ return to the office is critical to achieve optimal productivity.

“When bank CEOs make that ultimate call to their employees to return to the office, it is their job to offer offices that staff want to return to,” he wrote.

“Work from home isn’t working for Canada’s banks,” he wrote in the Globe. “It isn’t working for every banker, either.”