When the winter slump set in earlier this year, Scott Taber flew to warmer climes. But the public relations agent didn’t leave the job behind: instead, he spent two weeks working in sunny Florida, taking advantage of an initiative by his employer, Toronto-based Media Profile, which allows its staff to spend a short time working from anywhere in the world.
This type of arrangement, which some call “tracances” — a contraction of the words work and vacation — is not entirely new to Canadian businesses, but it has been enjoying a resurgence in popularity with employees and employers since the beginning. of the COVID-19 pandemic. Now, some companies that rarely saw their staff take the opportunity to go abroad or elsewhere in Canada for a few weeks or months are seeing employees rush to do so, while other companies offer such programs for the first time.
A December study of 1,000 people by vacation booking company Kayak estimates that 27% of employed Canadians and 38% of Gen Z workers (who are 18-24 years old) will be tracing this year.
Balance work and personal life
Media Profile allows its employees who have been with the company for at least six months to take between two and four weeks to work remotely and offers them up to $3,000 for travel or accommodation expenses. The program aims to help staff maintain a healthy work-life balance and provide them with flexibility.
As soon as it was announced in November 2021, workers got on board: “Immediately, the chat channel exploded. People were so excited,” Mr. Taber recalls.
The latter chose to go to Siesta Key, Florida, with his wife and daughter, to recover from the heaviness of daily life after two years of a pandemic. “It was nice to go somewhere where the sun was shining and where you could walk, have a coffee, without having to bundle up,” he illustrated. A colleague of Mr. Taber ventured to San Diego; another will go to Nicaragua.
Tracing is also permitted at Thomson Reuters, where staff can work from anywhere in Canada for up to eight weeks.
Some use the program to care for elderly or sick loved ones they don’t live with, while others visit family they rarely see or move to a more scenic workspace, explained the media conglomerate’s human resources director, Mary Alice Vuicic. She would like to be able to push the program even further to allow staff to venture outside of Canada, but Thomson Reuters must first consider foreign tax obligations and how to account for time spent working there. ‘foreigner.
An advantage for talent retention
Mme Vuicic hopes the program will give workers the flexibility they want, but she also sees it as a good way to attract talent in a market that has caused many of her workers to rethink their careers or realize that a check pay was no longer enough to maintain a grueling job.
Workers are now looking for unique benefits that respect work-life balance. In response, many companies are offering welfare, daycare and elderly care allowances, more flexible hours and extra holidays. “Companies that don’t provide the experience people are looking for won’t be able to attract and retain talent,” said Ms.me Vuicic. “Talent is in charge today. »
Talent is part of the reason why energy technology company EnPowered, based in Kitchener, Ont., is now allowing traces that can stretch for up to three months.
Employees show up to meetings from the balcony of a vacation home in Costa Rica, and another who had been invited to a wedding in India was able to extend her stay to reunite with her family. “When I started in human resources, someone who wanted [retourner dans son pays d’origine] for a wedding had to save his vacation time for an entire year to be able to leave for three or four weeks […]so it’s good that she didn’t have to do that,” said EnPowered Director of People and Culture Deidre Falkiner.
But some difficulties may arise. The woman in India, for example, was in a completely different time zone and felt disconnected from her colleagues. She eventually changed her hours so she could attend team meetings.
Others have raised questions about the privacy and security laws they may be subject to in another country and the health care coverage they receive abroad. The company must therefore study local laws and software before anyone travels and may limit overseas working time to three months to minimize situations where people may lose coverage in the event of illness. or accident.
As new problems arise, the company adjusts. “If we don’t choose to continue having this conversation, we will never identify the best way to do things,” noted M.me Falkiner. We will continue to learn. »