RTO: This is the Bad Place!
Or lessons in how to kill employee morale
I posted recommendations on how to manage RTO from an accessibility perspective which seems like a lifetime ago. If the Treasury Board wanted to handle this in the worst possible way, I think they’ve very much achieved their goals.
So let’s talk about how they can salvage this (they won’t. I have zero faith at this point.)
Eat some crow and push the timelines off indefinitely. Three months is not sufficient time to organize things like childcare, accommodation notes, re-arrange lives, etc. (For those of you going “if you’re working from home, you should be working, not taking care of your children”, please know that you have to arrange extended childcare, like after school care, if you can’t pick them up from school on time. Or you might have informal care arrangements, like family members, that have to change to formal ones like after school care, because asking someone to care for your kid 2-3 times a week might be too much. This is a thing, and I hate that I have to put that explanation here. Being cranky about that is entirely needless. Child care is ridiculous, and there are waitlists that are 6+ months. You simply cannot easily change your arrangements for it.)
Timelines for RTO need to be based in reality. Sending the majority of your workforce back into the office when we’re still in a pandemic, there are two other viruses causing havoc, and our healthcare systems are overloaded is the opposite of sensible. Senior management should also have an understanding of life pressures, such as childcare, the possible implications for people who don’t live near an office, or who live in a region but have a position located in the national capital region.
This means at least 6 months and preferably a year after the actual pandemic is over (This will end, I write with more than slight desperation)-- we all know in the GoC, moving jobs isn’t fast. So for anyone who is in a region and working a headquarters job, that means you might want to decide if you’re staying regional, if you’re moving to the NCR, if you’re leaving entirely. 6 months to a year allows ample time to adjust childcare arrangements. It also allows time for us disabled people to start assembling any documentation required for accommodations, because at this point I assume that my next suggestion will be entirely ignored.
For anyone who requires accommodations, actually use the “yes by default” approach from the accommodations passport. Going through labour relations is not, and has never been, an optimal approach to disability accommodations. We’re in a state where healthcare is overloaded across the country, doctor’s appointments are running anywhere from weeks to months out, and quite frankly, a lot of doctors have a really terrible understanding of what accommodations notes need to be like. Assuming they’re supportive in the first place! My personal experience with talking with docs about accommodations notes has been, “as a high risk person, you should be prepared to die for the economy.” I am paraphrasing, but only slightly. For others I know, it has been pushed off and off, with pretty dire results for the people in question. Does this mean people might ‘inappropriately’ receive accommodations? Maybe! Is that something we should care about? I’m not so sure. Other people receiving accommodations normalizes it, and that’s generally what I want. Sticking out in a crowd because I’m disabled isn’t something I love, and that was a beautiful thing about WFH. Everyone was, and my needs weren’t seen as exceptional.
Actually listen to employees from marginalized groups and implement their solutions-- there have been a lot of people talking about how WFH eliminated or reduced racist, sexist, transphobic, fatphobic, and other such comments, microaggressions, allowed for more advancement, and had other benefits for their lives. This is a win, and if the government of Canada is actually interested in being an employer of choice, it’s something they should be embracing. Do I think it’s a perfect solution? Not really, because it doesn’t solve the issue of institutional racism and bias, or personal racism and bias, and that’s a significant problem that WFH won’t solve. But it does make things better for marginalized employees right now, and that matters.
Allow for other innovations and supports for jobs that do necessitate in-person work. Friends who have been in the office the entire time, we know you’re there and that you’re doing valuable work. You should be rewarded for it, especially during the pandemic. The GoC should be listening to folks about what would help them out-- you have to get to your job, so maybe that looks like free transit passes, or free parking. Maybe, god forbid, it means free coffee in the office. Maybe it means a return to a closed office where you can have plant friends! There’s a lot of potential options here, but whatever the answer is here, it involves listening to employees about what would make their workplace a better place for them to be.