Joel Schlesinger ©Postmedia Network Inc.
The remote work revolution didn’t start with the pandemic.
It was already well underway in the technology sector where highly skilled developers in high demand had proven they could work from anywhere.
Just ask one of North America’s leading tech sector talent hunters — Calgary-based Teamit.
“Way before the pandemic made everyone go remote, our business model had been focused on this trend for several years,” says Teamit president Alistair Shepherd-Cross.
The company was spun out of Agile Recruiting, which has been serving the city’s tech industry for 20-plus years.
Shepherd-Cross and Mini Sehgal co-founded Teamit with the goal of helping U.S. technology companies on the West Coast to use Calgary’s talent pool. That included helping several large technology companies open satellite offices in the city.
Geographic location had increasingly become less of a barrier for technology companies, including those headquartered in California’s Silicon Valley, says Sehgal, the chief financial officer at Teamit.
“That trend accelerated amid the pandemic, and now most companies are not concerned about the location of their talent,” Sehgal says. “And that’s not going away anytime soon, with a lot of tech workers preferring remote work.”
In fact, companies that don’t offer remote work as at least an option are likely to struggle to attract and retain talent.
“What’s really important from a recruitment and retention perspective is having flexibility,” Sehgal says. “Many workers want the ability to go to an office to come together or simply to a coffee shop for that social aspect of a workplace.”
Of course, competitive wages are a key part of the mix. Quality of life is also a key factor, and that’s an area where Calgary is particularly well-positioned, Shepherd-Cross says.
“It’s now less about where you work and more the livability of the city itself,” he says. “And Calgary has that in spades.”
Disclaimer: This story was created by Content Works, Postmedia’s commercial content division, on behalf of Calgary Economic Development.