Telework | Private eyes turn to Ottawa

Will the federal government set the benchmark for teleworking? Private employers will have their eyes on the conclusions of the ongoing negotiations.

If it decides to formalize telework in the next collective agreements of its civil servants, as demanded by their union representatives, the federal government could find itself at odds with what is happening among comparable workplaces in the private sector.

“The federal government is aware that any action it takes will have an impact both on its own workforce, but also on the message it sends to all employers and employees. across Canada,” said France Dufresne, national director of the employee experience sector at the human resources consulting firm WTW (Willis Towers Watson).

“In terms of teleworking, among the large employers in the public sector, including Crown corporations, many are monitoring what the federal government will do in the next employment contracts of its civil servants,” analyzes Ms.^me Dufresne in interview with The Press.

A necessary presence for the Chamber of Commerce

“In the private sector, it is believed that the return of employees [en milieu de travail] is a global productivity issue. After three years of teleworking, often isolated at home, there is a growing desire to rekindle the productivity gains that come from teamwork, the transmission of knowledge between employees, and inclusion. new employees,” explained Michel Leblanc, President and Chief Executive Officer of the Chamber of Commerce of Metropolitan Montreal, during a telephone interview with The Press.

An observation shared in part by M^me Dufresne. “Among employers in non-governmental sectors, what we observe most is the hybridity of return-to-work policies: that is, neither completely flexible towards telework, nor completely rigid with the full return to the office for all.

“The other thing that we also observe is the segmentation of return to work policies and teleworking according to the needs of the sectors of activity or the tasks to be carried out in the same company or organization. »

The importance of teamwork

In the opinion of Glenn Castanheira, executive director of the Montréal centre-ville organization, “the main reasons why people come back to the office these days are to maintain their competitiveness as a work team, their sense of belonging and their corporate culture.

“What companies [au centre-ville] tell us is that they no longer want their employees to come back to the office to be more productive in, for example, data entry. What they want is for their employees to return to the office in order to be more productive working together, with the emphasis on collective productivity rather than individual productivity.

“That is very important. The private sector sees it, but if the government sector doesn’t see it, it will catch up with us later,” Castanheira said in an interview with The Presson the sidelines of the release Thursday of a survey on the level of appreciation of downtown Montreal among its workers, visitors and residents.

In this context, considers Michel Leblanc, of the Board of Trade of Metropolitan Montreal, “if the federal government decided to keep its civil servants teleworking in their place of residence, there would be productivity issues. [des services au public] and that would go in the opposite direction to what is happening in other sectors of the labor market”.

In the meantime, he underlines, “it can be said that the federal government, for the past year or two, has not been conspicuous by the efficiency of its services, whether in immigration, with passports, the management of pensions to the elderly”.