Conference Board sees success with fully remote model

May 23, 2022

When the Conference Board of Canada decided to go fully remote in the summer of 2020, it was not a cavalier decision.

“We did it very deliberately,” says Susan Black, Toronto-based CEO.

‘We said, ‘Given the kind of organization we are, the work we do and what our employees tell us, we’re not going to try and be hybrid, we are going to take our energy and effort and we are going to invest in becoming the best virtual-first organization we can be.’”

Having sold its permanent building in Ottawa, the move seems to be working out just fine, says Black.

“The headline on that is: ‘It’s worked out very well for us,’” she says.

“I hope we all look at this as an enormous opportunity to work in a more flexible way to give employees more autonomy, to make the world of work even more engaging than it has been. For many years, we’ve seen survey results to say employees aren’t engaged and we’ve seen the ‘great resignation,’ in the U.S. and here, so this is an opportunity to really innovate and to get it right.”

Source: Langley Advance Times