Work-At-Home Will Work Itself Out: THE VOTER

Many years ago, in order to reduce traffic congestion and stretch OC Transpo’s services, the federal government  introduced the concept of staggered hours for the public service.

People could start their work day as early as 7 a.m. and as late as 10 a.m. Eight hours later, they’d head home.

You could pretty well choose which ‘shift’ you worked with the proviso that each office had to be staffed through the core hours of 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. That meant that if the receptionist worked 7 to 3, someone had to cover her post from 3 to 4.

It was a blessing for parents of school-age children since one parent could see them off in the morning and the other would be home early to welcome them after school. It greatly reduced child-care costs since you might only need it for a short time after school if at all. Parents would split professional development days and school holidays which meant they only needed care during the summer.

That lasted for several years and then people or individual offices began to drift towards the more conventional 8 to 4 or 9 to 5 hours. Particularly in smaller offices, it was difficult to allow everyone to work their hours of choice and still maintain coverage during core hours. Management cited problems getting people together for meetings – this was in the days before the internet so Zoom didn’t exist – and there were difficulties when people had to connect with other offices or departments. As new hires joined an office, they stopped offering them any choice and, over time, most people had shifted to standard hours. There were holdouts in some offices but they were a distinct minority.

I wonder if this will be the fate of three-day weeks and even work-from-home itself. It took several years for staggered hours to become a thing of the past and it could be that, if the feds exercise some patience, they might not have to do much forcing to have people return to working from the office with a five-day week and “regular” hours. With turnover and attrition, which is a considerable factor for the feds, if people were given traditional hours and place-of-work requirements as they are hired or promoted, reverting to the old ways shouldn’t take long.

Sometimes if you leave things be, they have a way of resolving themselves.

The Voter is a respected community activist and long-time Bulldog commenter who prefers to keep her identity private.

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