Commuting | The happy path to work

During the pandemic, Marie-France Denoncourt found herself teleworking full-time, she who, in normal times, used to travel all over North America as part of her duties. Her job – doing inspections at fish processing plants – suddenly became less attractive. Marie-France wanted to change.

Catherine Handfield
The Press

“My goal was to find a new job in my neighborhood because I didn’t want to be stuck in traffic five days a week,” she says.

And she found one. Exactly 23 minutes walk from her house. Twenty-three minutes of happiness.

“It keeps me moving, too. After all that time working from home, I was much less active,” says Marie-France, who works face-to-face two days a week.

Edith Crevier, who lives in the northern crown of Montreal, has also resumed travel between home and work. When she has to go to downtown Montreal, at rush hour, it takes her an hour, an hour and a quarter by car. It’s long, very long.

But today his job only requires two or three days of face-to-face work every two weeks. The mother is surprised to find these journeys less unpleasant than before.

Yes, the traffic jams continue to make her sweat, the potholes on rue Notre-Dame continue to scare her (“it’s the guerrillas”), but the young forties still appreciates this time for her.

“I take the time to listen to the music I love. And I don’t hate being in a car; I see it a bit as a release,” says Edith, who was on maternity leave during the pandemic.

Positive?

In the expression “metro-work-sleep”, the “metro” gets a bad rap. We perceive this commuting between home and work as a waste of time, a source of stress, an attack on our well-being. Can we still take something positive from this space-time between home and work?

“It’s a question that I ask myself, but the scientific literature, to date, does not answer it clearly”, answers the researcher Annie Barreck, who has precisely given herself the mission of advancing knowledge.

In her doctorate, at the School of Industrial Relations of the University of Montreal, Annie Barreck is studying the impact of commuting on professional exhaustion and on work-family conflicts. She wants to verify whether these trips increase work-family conflicts (and therefore psychological distress), or whether they can, under certain conditions, improve the ability of individuals to combine the demands of work and family.

“I don’t think it’s something that’s always negative, I don’t think it’s always a stressor,” says Annie Barreck.

Different factors can come into play, including the mode of transport (active transport could, for example, bring more benefits than the car) and of course the duration of the journey. Studies have shown that the more time we spend on the road, the more work-family conflicts we have, the less satisfied we are with the time spent on our leisure activities, and the less satisfied we are with our work in general. Scientific literature also shows that women are more affected by long journeys than men.

M^me Barreck, who points out that when the line between home and work is too blurred, it can generate stress and work-family conflict.

President of the Order of Psychologists of Quebec, Christine Grou points out that one of the things people have had to adapt to, by being forced to telecommute, is precisely losing this buffer zone between home and work. work.

In his eyes, this valve can bring positive things to our daily lives.

According to Christine Grou, the return to the presence is a great opportunity to think about ways to make this commuting more productive. And by that, she doesn’t necessarily mean making it a work area; it can also be an opportunity to refuel, to empty, to breathe.

The person who needs to talk can opt for carpooling, the one who is always solicited at home could appreciate the bubble of his car, the one who likes to read will find his account in the metro, lists the psychologist. Either, there are traffic jams, but the current job market makes employers relatively flexible, she recalls. Arriving an hour later at work and leaving an hour later may be an option.

“The idea is to find the right modality, one that maximizes benefits and minimizes stress factors,” concludes Christine Grou.