TORONTO – Employees like Matt Fairbanks are one of the reasons the hospitality and restaurant industry is struggling to find workers, even as the pandemic weakens.
The 34-year-old former bartender has moved from selling beer in Toronto to selling restaurant software to a company in Saskatchewan – which he does remotely.
“I have always been one foot outside the hospitality industry and the pandemic has really shown me how vulnerable work is and the instability of everything,” he said in an interview.
Painful commuting to work has disappeared, while additional flexibility has improved his work-life balance. Fairbanks allows employees to work abroad for up to 90 days, take unlimited vacations and travel or work from anywhere in Canada.
“In fact, I encouraged many of my friends in the restaurant industry to look at other options and change the way they live their lives.”
Remote work flourished during the pandemic as companies temporarily closed their offices, but this created a rift among Canadian workers. While 40% of work in Canada can be done remotely, experts say, this means that 60% of workers do not have access to this benefit because they are required to be on site.
And this can create resentment and reaction from workers considered essential, such as nurses, ambulance workers and retailers, who were applauded during the pandemic but are unable to realize the benefits of work. from a distance, said change management expert Linda Duxbury, a professor of chancellor management at Sprott School of Business at Carlton University who has been studying remote work for decades.
“The problem we will have here is that we will create two classes of workers – wealthy and poor,” she said in an interview.
Those who could work remotely, especially professionals such as accountants, lawyers and technicians, prospered financially during the blockade, while those forced to work on site were often overworked or lost their jobs entirely due to reduced capacity and businesses, which closed forever.
This second group was told they were valued and important, “and now they don’t feel important,” Duxbury said.
The ability to work remotely is one of the key moments in the history of work, although its application is usually limited to those working in the field of knowledge, said Erica Pimentel, assistant accountant at the Smith School of Business at Queen’s University.
“So when 60 percent of the workforce is excluded from this massive change, it will obviously have some consequences for society,” she said, because it is very inconsistent in how it affects the general population.
Duxbury warns that the jury is still working remotely, or what she calls “forced work from home.” It is constantly heard by companies looking for best practices and examples of what others are doing. But she said it was too early to assess the style of work, as everyone was experimenting with different models.
“Remote work during the pandemic was a big giant experiment. We are now moving on to the second experiment, the next one, which is a hybrid operation, “she said.
The expediency of remote work is very dependent on the work. This is not conducive to brainstorming, socializing, coaching, mentoring, adapting, team building and customer satisfaction.
And while people who work from home spend far more hours – estimated at four to 10 extra hours a week – the data shows that this has not increased productivity, Duxbury said.
“Just because we’ve worked 100% remotely for the last two years doesn’t mean it’s a sustainable model for a lot of people and a lot of jobs that keep moving forward.”
Despite the disadvantages, telecommuting is increasingly preferred, especially by Generation Z, digital local people who have always had access to the Internet and social media, Pimentel said.
This cohort is coming of age and joining the workforce with new attitudes about employers’ obligations to them and how different parts of their lives come together, unlike millennials, Generation X and the baby boomers, who in many cases are now bosses.
“So, there is this generation as a mismatch between bosses and their employees, and everyone is unhappy.”
Many companies would prefer employees to return to the office full-time, but face fierce opposition from workers who have begun to like working from home, Duxbury said. Faced with record vacancies amid decades of low unemployment and threats of resignation, employers have been forced to be flexible.
This means that employees with the skills they are looking for are able to negotiate better working conditions than someone without those skills.
The technicians, who make up most of the three percent of Canadians who worked remotely before the pandemic, are among those in the driver’s seat now.
The requirement for telecommuting has become the exception to the rule because it is so difficult to compete for talent, said Christina McDougall, founder and president of Artemis, a technology executive search firm.
“Unless there is an absolute reason why you have to be physically present, such as working on a robot or being in a building, most organizations need to be flexible,” she said.
The increase in telecommuting has also changed as companies recruit, because people can work anywhere and do not have to be close to the company’s headquarters. This expands the jobs one can consider, but also gives companies a wider range of candidates, as well as increased competition with other potential suitors.
McDougall believes that the move to remote work is constant for sectors such as technology, because the pandemic has shown that organizations can build things with people working remotely.
“You can’t put gin back in the bottle. Now people find it trivial that they may have to walk into an office every day. “
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