Is your crew about to jump ship?
by Steven Dolman and Nancy Stallone

With most affordable homes springing up 70, 80, even 100 kilometres away from downtown Toronto, it's no wonder that urban employers are losing some of their key staff. Workers with young families are especially prone to leaving the high-priced Toronto housing market for the wide lots and quiet neighbourhoods to the distant east, west and north.

A Toronto Star headline couldn't have been clearer: “While Toronto's growth stagnates, Milton, Barrie see the real action.” A startling trend is forming in southern Ontario, and the patchwork of suburbs and cities we call the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) will soon be enveloped in a giant economic zone to be called the Greater Golden Horseshoe.

Companies should prepare for this trend now by creating strategies to support employees whose round-trip commute can stretch to two or three hours and cost between $100 and $200 per week.

During the hiring process, you should be sure that prospective employees who face a long commute have fully thought through the hurdles. Given that you may already have a large workforce in place, here are a few out-of-the-box ideas to help you develop a retention strategy that's right for your company:

• Offer compressed work schedules, allowing staff to work four longer days each week;
• Offer commuter hours, with employees shifting their normal workday forward or backward to avoid peak rush-hour traffic;
• Offer transit or mileage subsidies;
• Start a car-pooling program;
• Educate staff about coping with the stress of commuting;
• Allow staff to occasionally telecommute, or arrange for them to work in a branch office near home or in one of the distributed work centres that have opened recently, such as SuiteWorks (www.stopcommuting.ca);
• Consider supplementing the down-payment cost for staff who buy their first home within a reasonable distance of their place of work;
• Allow staff who commute via transit and use laptops or BlackBerrys to count some of their commuting time as work time;
• Offer personal days in addition to vacation time for staff to enjoy.

Although cities like Barrie and Milton don't yet have populations as large as the GTA enclaves of Mississauga and Durham Region, employers should take steps today to prepare for a talent market in which the best and the brightest may live the furthest away.

Steven Dolman is an Assurance & Advisory Partner on the Real Estate Team. He can be reached at (416) 644-4435 or by e-mail at steven_dolman@mintzca.com. Nancy Stallone is the Director of Human Resources. She can be reached by phone at (416) 644-4340 or by e-mail at nancy_stallone@mintzca.com.

The Key is an e-newsletter written by the Real Estate Team of Mintz & Partners LLP.Please go to http://www.mintzca.com/index.php?section=redirectory to learn more about our Real Estate Team. The issues raised are for information purposes only. Readers are urged to contact their professional advisors before acting on the basis of material contained herein.

This office is an independently owned and operated member of the Collins Barrow National Cooperative Incorporated. The Collins Barrow trademarks are used under license. For more information about Mintz & Partners, please visit our Web site at www.mintzca.com.

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