PSAC workers and supporters picket in front of President of the Treasury Board Mona Fortier's office in Ottawa on April 21, 2023.Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press
Claude Lavoie is a contributing columnist for The Globe and Mail. He was director-general of economic studies and policy analysis at the Department of Finance from 2008 to 2023.
Obviously, there are cases where adopting remote work will not be possible or beneficial, even with complementary organizational changes, and employers have the power to dictate where and how employees complete their work.
But the problem with the federal government’s decision to force employees back to the office – which takes effect on Monday – is that it’s a “one-size-fits-all” approach that is not backed by a good rationale or analysis.
The key reasons seem to be helping downtown businesses in Ottawa and addressing public perception, and ignores the productivity, quality of life, environmental and diversity benefits.
It’s thus not surprising that the public-service unions have balked at the government’s demand, promising a “summer of discontent.” As we see all too often, the government has bent to political pressure rather than evidence-based analysis.
Remote work is a workplace innovation that should be judged like any other innovation. Innovation disrupts the current order, has its pros and cons, and is better suited or beneficial to some more than others. The decision to adopt innovation in any part of an organization should be based on whether it has a real potential to be superior to the alternative, and not on the disruption it creates.
Would you like the government to ban the adoption of cellphones because they reduce in-person interactions and make people less productive by encouraging them to watch mindless videos? Or do you think we should ban online shopping because it kills the small businesses in your city? I would be surprised if many of you would let go of your cellphones or the convenience of Amazon, yet these are the same arguments the government and some people are bringing against the adoption of remote work.
One example is Doug Ford asking the federal government to bring public servants back to the office to help small businesses in downtown Ottawa. Businesses have always been able to adapt to change. Those that closed downtown will move closer to where people are working or transform themselves to offer products new remote workers need. If we follow Mr. Ford’s logic, we would have stopped the introduction of the automobile because blacksmiths would close.
Others argue against remote work because it’s not an option available to everyone. Should we then not allow people to work in air-conditioned or heated offices because some people, such as construction workers or farmers, cannot?
Remote work is an innovation that is here to stay. About 20 per cent of Canadians work mostly from home, and 30 per cent more would like to do so according to an Angus Reid Survey. Moreover, half of those working from home would look for another job if asked to go back to the office full-time. Employees who work remotely have more flexibility and control of their agenda, don’t waste time commuting in traffic and can locate in areas with lower housing costs. Remote work has shown to improve employee mental health and is good for the environment.
Although many businesses have successfully implemented remote work, many employers remain wary, worrying it will hurt company culture, mentoring traditions, exchange of ideas and, in the end, productivity. Existing empirical studies so far suggest that hybrid workers (partly remote and partly on site) are as productive as those working fully on site, and those working fully remote are about 10 per cent less productive than those working on-site. However, the latter does not mean that remote work is less profitable for a company. Lower productivity can be more than offset by the savings from not owning buildings and paying maintenance, taxes and utility costs. Similarly, on the public-sector side, remote work can potentially yield net fiscal benefits through significantly fewer buildings and maintenance costs even if there are more civil servants.
Employers can also benefit from access to a bigger pool of candidates, greater employee diversity (including removing barriers for disabled workers), and as in the federal government case, better regional representation. But in cases where the benefits of remote working mostly accrue to workers, the bargaining process should be free to let workers exchange them for a reduction in other benefits.
Gaining the full potential of remote work likely requires changes to organizational and managerial practices. Managers need to assess workers more on what they produce than on the time they spend in the office. They need to establish new ways of working that include regular interactions with employees and opportunities for junior employees to interact with senior ones and employees in other parts of the organization. A good example is Zapier, a U.S. software company that has been operating fully remote for a decade, that sets up virtual meetings between random coworkers to reproduce the chance encounters that organically happen in physical environments.