Written by Kieran Delamont, Associate Editor, London Inc.

ANOTHER MONDAY IN Canada, which brings another week of work, another round of small talk about the weather over the weekend and another world-leading 1.9 days of remote work ahead.

Canada came out on top of the world rankings in terms of the prevalence of remote work in a recent Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research paper, in which Canada led the U.K., Finland, U.S., Germany and China. Globally, we almost double the average of 1.2 days of remote work.

What explains our lead? There are structural reasons underlying it, as you might expect. “The type of industries in each country, their experience of the pandemic and wealth levels all play a role, in predictable ways,” wrote The Economist. In Canada, we have a high share of knowledge work, well-developed telecommunications infrastructure and we’re pretty spread out (with unappealing commutes in some places).

But what seems to have surprised researchers is that the strongest correlations appear to be cultural. “In this settled remote-work era it is those in the industrious Anglosphere who are most likely to work from their spare rooms,” The Economist summarized.

“Development matters, density matters, industrial mix matters and even lockdown length matters,” said Stanford’s Nicholas Bloom, who co-authored the study. “But the one thing that really jumps out is culture. Just compare the U.K., with high levels of WFH, and Japan with low levels. They are similar in terms of development, density, industrial mix and lockdown, but hugely different in face-time culture.”

They went further than that as well, finding that WFH rates correlated with measures of whether a society was considered individualistic or collectivist.

“Adopting the practice, or so the thinking goes, involves bosses trusting their workers, and therefore allowing them a degree of autonomy,” Bloom wrote in The Economist. “Executives in more individualistic societies seem to be more comfortable loosening the leash and workers more comfortable working from home.” The other way of interpreting that, though, might be that workers in less individualistic societies see more value in working physically alongside their coworkers.

This should all come as little surprise here in Canada, where remote work has always been particularly popular, even in the global context. A report from the Public Service Alliance of Canada last October found that 81 per cent of Canadians see remote work as good for them, and 66 per cent believe it is a productivity booster.

LEADERSHIP

Is empathy a learnable skill?

Empathy is a top leadership trait for next-gen CEOs. But can you teach it?

THE GLOBAL PRIVATE equity firm KKR & Co. has never been one to hew to corporate orthodoxy ― notably for private equity firms, they are advocates of employee ownership models, which they have used to great success at companies like Simon & Schuster and in over five dozen other companies in its portfolios. (If you know KKR, it might be from their role in the 1989 book Barbarians at the Gate.)

Over time, they’ve come to have a somewhat more holistic view of how companies should be run, and now they are experimenting with another question: Can you train your executives to have the kind of empathy that seems to separate successful leaders from floundering ones?

KKR’s CEO Pete Stavros has recently been promoting a new idea ― empathy gyms ― that are meant to try to train a value that some might see as something you either have or you don’t.

“KKR is now piloting three different training programs designed to increase empathy,” reported Bloomberg. A CEO at a company in KKR’s portfolio might be invited to see how their employees live or will have to go through active listening training or meet with members of different parts of the business.

“They go through real-world financial challenges ― applying for a payday loan, navigating healthcare costs or budgeting an hourly wage,” explained Culture Partners. “It’s a wake-up call for many leaders who have never experienced the daily financial anxiety their employees face.”

Stavros said he believes empathy among leaders is a key reason why some companies thrive and others don’t. “We’ve beaten our heads against the walls for years trying to understand why you could put two similar companies in the same industry next to each other ― one company has knockout performance, and in the other one, nothing happens,” he told PE Hub. “It comes down to that singular person at the top who’s setting the tone.”

Working with the Stanford Social Neuroscience Lab, Stavros is now fleshing this out into a full-fledged school of corporate thought ― one that he thinks could change the conversation around how investment leaders act from the top. In their early results, they’ve seen a strong correlation between the success of companies and the empathy levels of their CEOs.

“If we can show that we can grow leader empathy and that the employee experience moves,” Stavros said, “this could be a whole new field of development that we’re going to hopefully build.”

CULTURE

What is your workplace love language?

The concept of love languages, first introduced in 1992, is gaining new steam in the work environment of 2025

BACK IN THE 1990s, the concept of love languages was all the rage. (There were five, according to author Gary Chapman’s 1992 book: words of affirmation, quality time, receiving gifts, acts of service and physical touch.) Everybody had a personal love language, or so the theory went. Over the years, it became a major cultural phenomenon, even if psychologists mostly found the subject to be bunk.

But what’s old is new again, and in the workplace the idea of love languages ― or rather, the insight that different people need different things in different ways ― is gaining some new momentum as an organizational and human resources concept.

“While the concept of love languages is traditionally applied to romantic relationships, the underlying principle ― that people have different ways they feel valued ― is universal,” said Seth Eisenberg, a fan of the concept and the president of the Pairs Foundation. “When employees feel recognized in ways that resonate with them personally, their sense of emotional safety, loyalty and motivation increases dramatically.”

In one instance, a marketing executive told The Globe and Mail that he formalized the idea of love languages into part of their company’s onboarding process. Not all of them directly translate ― physical touch is a tricky one ― but most of them, like words of affirmation or acts of service, can be reimagined in the workplace.

What does it look like in practice? One example is appreciation. Author Paul E. White notes that “word is not the preferred mode of appreciation by over 50 per cent of employees.” For instance, a boss simply telling them “good job” isn’t going to bring much benefit. Other employees might not like to be recognized at all. “I don’t need verbal recognition and would rather not be publicly recognized,” one CEO, Teresa Johnson, told DigiDay’s WorkLife.

So, next time you’re strolling into work and you’re asked about your love language, don’t freak out. You’re not being flirted ― your HR team have just dusted off some old self-help concepts.

“When deployed with clarity and care, adapting love language principles can create more human, healthy and resilient workplaces,” said Eisenberg. “Workplaces where people thrive not just as employees, but as human beings.”

PRODUCTIVITY

Lighten up, will ya?

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When it comes to improving productivity at work, there’s an often-overlooked solution that can make a substantial difference: lighting

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