Canadian HR Reporter

4 www.hrreporter.com N E W S no longer need certain employees, and certain roles may be redundant or not essential, says Clarke. "I could see a lot of consolidation… Those employers who have done significant layoffs or who have operated with a skeleton crew or a smaller workforce may find that they can do quite well with that smaller workforce," he says. "I think we're going to end up with, potentially, a lot of litigation coming out of all this, whether it's due to terminations or whether it's due to constructive dismissals." Remote work ramps up Employers are also going to have to revisit their work-from-home policies, and the parameters, says Gauthier. "From a business perspective, even for a small association like ours, are we better off to have people work remotely and be as effective or do we pay thousands of dollars in office space every year?" While many people enjoy working remotely and find their organizations are just as effective, others still feel a disconnect despite the video calls and meetings, he says. "Right now, we know that flexibility in the workplace is one of the key things for attracting and retaining quality staff in terms of the war for talent, so working remotely is just another form of that flexibility… How do you create a balance where that's going to be attractive and still effective for the organization?" When it comes to flexible work arrangements, there's going to be greater demand on the part of employees to either have increased flexibility around their hours of work or expanded access to remote work, now that organizations have made the investments in infrastructure to enable that, says Taylor Green. "Employers are going to be faced with some policy decisions around whether or not they will support and continue to sustain those programs once we're back in the new normal," she says. "That presents a host of interesting challenges around collaboration and how work gets done in organizations… Some employers are not constructed for remote work, and it just won't be a long-term possibility for them. But others who have managed to embrace this new way of working will likely want to consider whether or not they need all of their physical office space anymore." Until education institutions and child- care centres are open again, employers are going to have to be extremely flexible in providing employees with what they need to manage family, home and work, says Taylor Green. Employers that might have had a more conservative view might be impressed by how well remote work has gone and be more open to employees doing the remote work going forward, says Clarke. "Employers will also be looking at shrinking their overall bricks-and-mortar footprint, depending on the nature of their business, and they could do that, of course, by having employees alternate working from home or at the office." Manulife has always offered flexible work arrangements to employees, and that piece will absolutely continue, says Kitchen. "Might we see more people pick up on it and want to do that going forward? Potentially and possibly so," she says. "But we do expect to have people back into work physically because that collaboration, that human connection will always be an important part of the work that we do." "You can virtually do white boards and ideation together, but there's something with people in a room together that's always going to remain really important, so it's [about] innovation, it's creativity, it's… also empathy with our customers and with each other." CHRR HALF OF CANADIANS SUFFERING JOB LOSSES "This has been an unprecedented reality and everybody deals with anxiety and stress in different ways." Louise Taylor Green, HRPA 49% number of people who say the COVID-19 pandemic has caused a change in their employment status 1 in 10 number of people who lost their job permanently 4 in 10 number of people who lost their job temporarily 1 in 5 number of people who had their hours reduced 1 in 5 number of people who had their hours increased Source: Forum Research

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