Though not everyone is on board with the idea after years of remote work, big companies in Toronto are starting to push harder to get their employees back into the office more often, even if on a hybrid work model.

One sign of the change is the fact that rents continue to skyrocket in the city as many who left during the pandemic are returning, now having to physically go to work at least some of the time.

Toronto is starting to return to the office as restrictions in Ontario loosen up https://t.co/uhiLGycNiV

— Victor Assivero (@Dtrini69) March 1, 2022

And while the city still has a lot of vacant office space to fill — though the glut of available space started becoming repopulated again last year — big firms that usually lead the way of such trends are now making more formal calls for people to get back to the workplace in-person.

One of these is the Royal Bank of Canada, which issued a memo to its 90,000-strong workforce on Tuesday advising them that they will need to come into work more often starting next month — about two or three days a week for most office jobs, a source told BNN Bloomberg.

Though this is already the case for some teams, it will apply company-wide as the bank encourages more in-person attendance and collaboration, something that its competitors have likewise been doing through a slow, phased approach.

Most return-to-work models began on a voluntary basis, with more firm rules about mandatory in-office time starting this fall.

Toronto rent prices are skyrocketing as employers call workers back to the office https://t.co/a9SRtGCk1x #Toronto #TorontoRealEstate #RealEstate #Rent

— blogTO (@blogTO) August 15, 2022

Mayor John Tory is also among those who have urged the public to get off their sad couch-laptop setup and back into the workplace as the city is now fully reopen.

"I hope other businesses will follow our lead and I know from my meetings with major employers that most of them are, sometime over the next two or three weeks," Tory said back in March, announcing the return of his own staff to City Hall.

"They say a lot of their employees want to come back, they certainly want them to come back and we're doing this as they will do it with health and safety in mind."