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Why a return to the office is ‘not super-high’ on this Ottawa tech CEO’s priority list

April 11, 2025

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While tech leaders around the world are embracing return-to-office policies, Michael Johnson is bucking the trend – and loving it. Johnson is the CEO of Multiview Financial Software, an Ottawa-based company that helps health-care organizations, financial institutions and other customers automate functions such as accounting, financial reporting, budgeting, sales forecasting, materials management and other “back-office” processes. Founded in 1990, Multiview is hardly a newcomer to its field. But it’s riding a historic wave of success, adding 100 hospitals to its client list in its most recent fiscal year that ended March 31 and growing its revenues more than 25 per cent compared with 2024. Johnson, who assumed his current role in 2019 after a two-year stint as the company’s chief financial officer, is quick to credit Multiview’s 150 employees for the current hot streak. And a big part of the reason why the company has been able to recruit and keep such talent, he says, is precisely because it’s not telling workers they have to work in an office. In fact, Multiview no longer even has an office for employees to come to. The company vacated its former headquarters on Carling Avenue at the end of last year, and while Johnson says Multiview will likely “throw up some walls” again at some point, it won’t be any time soon. “It’s just not super-high on our priority list,” he says. Multiview is swimming against the current in a sector that is wholeheartedly buying into stricter return-to-office and hybrid work policies. Amazon, for example, made headlines last September when it mandated a return to the office full-time, while other big names like Apple, Google and Meta are now requiring employees to be at their cubicles at least a few days a week. But Johnson prefers his company’s approach. He cites a speaker at Ottawa’s SaaS North conference, who recently offered this advice: “Don’t hire the wrong person in the right city.” “It’s something that we’ve kind of kept in mind at Multiview in looking for talent,” he explains. Multiview has had workers across Canada and the United States for years, and about half of its employees now live outside of Ottawa. But Johnson says the benefits of going fully remote didn’t really hit home until the pandemic, when he asked one of his staffers in Iowa how things were going. To his surprise, the U.S. worker told Johnson that fully virtual meetings felt “way more inclusive” for remote workers who previously had been dialling in to meetings where everyone else was gathered in person. When COVID caused all meetings to shift online, the worker didn’t feel as isolated on calls “when everyone was the same size on the screen.” Johnson took the comment to heart. “Shame on me for not realizing that it truly felt like we had two classes of employees – we had those in Ottawa that were in the office and we had everybody else,” he says now. “If we’re going to sit here and say, ‘Look, our focus is really on creating a great place to work,’ we can’t have an imbalance like that. “So, to us, we feel like (going fully remote) has been the right thing for our organization, given what we do in the software and services business. We’re very happy with it and we think it’s been a part of what’s allowed us to attract and retain talent. I think it’s less about the remote thing and more about the overall commitment to trying to empower our people, and flexibility is a part of that.” Multiview is saving on real estate costs, but Johnson says the decision to go fully remote had nothing to do with the bottom line. Multiview is putting the money it used to spend on rent into other initiatives aimed at keeping its employees connected, such as semi-annual or quarterly in-person get-togethers. “It’s not a huge delta in terms of the costs,” Johnson explains. “We still want to have collaboration. I would argue that we’re actually not saving any money – if anything, we’re probably spending a little bit more. But I do believe the outcomes are better because of the team we’re able to attract and retain.”