Make sure you’re sitting down for this: more than 90% of organizations have adopted or will adopt a formal telework policy

Normandin Beaudry announces the results on its post-pandemic telework practices survey launched in May. Spotlight on the thoughts of 340 Canadian organizations who answered the call.

Prior to the pandemic, only 26% of organizations had adopted a formal telework policy. Today, 91% of organizations have adopted such a policy or plan to do so, which indicates that the pandemic was a catalyst for decisions and trends!

This is especially true for sectors in which there was little or no telework, such as public administration, construction, non-durable goods manufacturing and energy. Only 10% of these organizations had implemented such a policy, whereas this percentage is now as high as 80%.

Among the organizations that had not implemented a formal telework policy before the pandemic, 12% do not plan to adopt one. This statistic is even higher in the durable goods manufacturing sector (38%), in which jobs are more likely to require employees to be physically present.

Furthermore, the nature of the jobs is the primary criterion that determines eligibility to work from home for 85% of organizations, regardless of the sector.

Almost half the organizations (47%) with a policy have established or will establish a maximum number of telework days per week. This statistic increases in the information, culture and entertainment sector (77%) and the educational services (86%) sector, since being physically present is required to ensure that operations run smoothly.

The majority of these organizations are planning for a maximum of two or three days of telework per week. Additionally, recent study conducted by Statistics Canada demonstrated that 41% of workers would like to have a similar schedule.

Only 17% of organizations with a telework policy are ready to allow employees to work from home as many days per week as they want. Some sectors, like electronic games and telecommunications, are more flexible in this respect: for 67% of these organizations, a weekly maximum will not be implemented.

Allowing employees to telework from anywhere they want has limited acceptance. Several administrative and tax aspects need to be taken into consideration and require further analysis before proceeding. However:

• 29% of organizations allow it within the province
• 15% of organizations allow it within Canada
• 6% of organizations allow it from abroad

Smaller organizations (fewer than 200 employees) are more flexible with regard to this practice and allow it according to percentages of 35%, 20% and 11%. It goes without saying that smaller organizations often have fewer decision-making processes, which leaves more room for flexible management.

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