Around 40 percent of the Canadian workforce has the potential to work entirely from home. The experience of the COVID-19 pandemic confirmed this when roughly that proportion of workers set up shop in their home offices, kitchens and bedrooms in the earliest days of the shutdowns.
A new study from the Fraser Institute, however, finds that another 10 percent of the workforce could partially work from home. While rates of remote work are not forecasted to continue at the current high pace indefinitely, the study suggests that up to 25 percent of the workforce is expected to continue working remotely.
This is a major shift in society. And just as we have adapted and integrated new technologies into our work, we will need to adjust to this new remote work reality一including the ways our labour laws are structured.
Professor Morley Gunderson of the University of Toronto investigates the issue and finds that they are rapidly becoming outdated in the face of this change. Employment standards legislation, as well as workers’ compensation and health and safety regulations that were designed to service a workforce characterized by large, fixed worksites are ill-fitted for telecommuting, he writes.
Given that the past year and a half have shown the viability and the benefits of remote work 一 including reduced commute times, lower housing prices if they can move to more affordable areas, productivity gains, more control over their working environment, and improved worker satisfaction 一 Gunderson recommends that policymakers should avoid simply extending the outdated regulations to apply to remote work.
Rather, emphasis should be on removing barriers that inhibit working from home, such as extending broadband infrastructure, increasing flexibility in zoning to enable market adjustments to the new reality, and providing information on best practices in this area to facilitate market adjustments to such best practices.
