色色啦

鈥淚t will help bring the public service in the municipalities closer to the people they serve and will revitalize our workplaces and downtowns across Ontario,鈥� he explained.

You can call me a skeptic. Because I鈥檓 not remotely convinced the end of remote work at city hall is a good idea.

Let鈥檚 start with the second part of Ford鈥檚 explanation: the idea that organizations should ditch remote work to 鈥渞evitalize鈥� downtowns has always struck me as ridiculous. Don鈥檛 get me wrong here. I鈥檓 a big fan of local businesses 鈥� especially downtown businesses 鈥� but forcing a bunch of people to fundamentally change their day-to-day lives to help out businesses strikes me as an unfair tradeoff.

No disrespect, but that amounts to asking people to sacrifice a lot for the glory of food courts in the PATH. There are other ways to promote and support our local retailers and restaurants.

Which leaves only the second justification offered by Ford: that ending remote work policies will bring workers 鈥渃loser to the people they serve.鈥� While it鈥檚 hard to argue against that from a literal geographic perspective, the subtext is that people working five days a week in an office will produce better work than people working under a hybrid arrangement or fully remote.

These days, it seems like everybody has a hot take on this subject. I鈥檝e talked to some people lately who say they鈥檙e just as productive and are aghast at the notion of their employer ever demanding more in-office time. But I鈥檝e also talked to people who believe working from home is an outright scam, and that remote workers are less productive and more prone to goofing off.

But all these opinions are generally based on little more than gut feelings. Ford and many of the other workplaces demanding a return to the old ways of working have done little to quantify their rationale. There鈥檚 scant data on productivity, especially as it relates to public service jobs.

Do in-office workers do better work? Are they better at hitting their deadlines? Do they make residents happier? Do they more efficient and save more taxpayer money?

For too many people, it鈥檚 nothing but vibes all the way down. Which leaves us with just one thing we can quantify, at least as it pertains to remote work amongst the 色色啦 public service: bringing everyone back to the office will likely be very expensive.

Here鈥檚 why. In November 2020, then-mayor John Tory鈥檚 cabinetlike executive committee After noting that the remote work policies necessitated by the pandemic had proven very popular with employees 鈥� with 95 per cent indicating via a survey that they鈥檇 like to work remotely at least some of the time 鈥斅� the report outlined a strategy to aggressively downsize the city鈥檚 inventory of office space.

The 55 office locations owned or leased by the city at the time were proposed to be reduced to 15, shedding a million square feet of office space. And the remaining space is markedly different. 鈥淭he new workplace design will fundamentally change the city’s office environment from one primarily filled with dedicated individual work spaces into a collaborative environment with a range of unassigned work spaces,鈥� the report says.

Under a process that has largely continued under Mayor Olivia Chow, the strategy outlined plans to save about $30 million a year on building maintenance and leasing costs 鈥斅爏ignificant money for a city hall always teetering on the edge of a budget crisis.

And there鈥檚 another major benefit. Many of the properties the city is abandoning will be transformed into housing projects with affordable units. It鈥檚 already started. CreateTO, the city鈥檚 real estate corporation, is working to redevelop the , the and , along with several other scattered city office buildings.

For its part, the city says about a quarter of its approximately 44,000 workers are currently on a hybrid work arrangement. A lot of front-line jobs have never been remote or hybrid, because it鈥檚 pretty hard to teach swimming lessons or collect garbage via a Zoom meeting. But the jobs that remain remote are often more senior roles. (Some city councillors also seem to really like working remotely.) Finding dedicated long-term full-time office space for all of them wouldn鈥檛 be simple 鈥� and it鈥檚 not clear at all that it鈥檚 necessary.

Any suggestion that the city should rethink its plan to swap office space for affordable housing聽and instead support a full-scale return-to-office mandate has to come with a darn good rationale. I want to see real data proving that there鈥檚 a productivity loss from hybrid work. Vibes aren鈥檛 enough, especially since broad mandates could prompt talented people to look elsewhere for employment. An expensive plan that causes talented people to leave the public sector would be a terrible mix 鈥� a much worse hybrid.聽