Commuting was a fact of life for Melissa Thorne.
She would wake up at 5:30 a.m. to make the trip into Toronto for work. Some days she was shocked by the traffic.
“I can’t believe it some mornings,” the Alcona resident said. “There are so many cars going down Yonge Street.”
According to Statistics Canada’s 2016 census, 82 per cent of the employed population in Innisfil reported leaving town for work. It's similar story in Barrie and other Simcoe County communities.
Hours of commuting are required to get to work, but Thorne did have the option to work from home a couple of days a month.
In March, that option became her only choice as the country responded to the threat of COVID-19 by closing businesses and encouraging people to stay home.
An unprecedented number of Canadians who did not work for an “essential service,” or who did not have the option of working from home, became unemployed.
As the province begins to ease COVID-19 restrictions, the question is asked: What will change about the way we work, and how will we get the people who lost their jobs back to work to restart the economy?
More people working from home may be part of the answer, as companies grapple with physical-distancing and gathering guidelines.
“I’m quite happy working from home,” said Thorne.
No more 5:30 a.m. wake-up; no more commute.
“I’m saving a huge amount of money in gas. I’m saving a huge amount of money in daycare,” she said, noting she and her son have found a rhythm over the past couple months.
She misses her co-workers, though: “You do miss that socialization.”
This change is of interest to municipalities, including the Town of Innisfil.
“The goal is to have people work in their community,” said Brennan Kenny, the town’s economic development champion.
The economic development department is surveying the community to learn more about residents' working situations and how the town might be able to support them, now, and post COVID-19.
“I think it is unavoidable that there is going to be some percentage that will continue to work remote,” Kenny said.
In a way, it is like local job creation.
It’s a quick win the town will take, especially considering one of the biggest economic development barriers in Innisfil is available and affordable commercial real estate.
That same topic can be used as an argument for more remote work, as businesses seek to cut down on their commercial footprint. In a COVID-19 world, some businesses may not be able to fit their whole workforce on site safely.
“Until we really get to that vaccine point where everybody feels like there is a normalcy, you’re going to see a certain percentage of the workforce working at home,” Kenny said.
So what do municipalities get from people working at home, or at least remote working?
“If you’re commuting, you’re not volunteering as much, you are not shopping locally as much,” Kenny said, highlighting community engagement as one goal.
Another is using this moment to try to help keep some of these people working remotely while addressing some of the reported challenges of remote work, such as social isolation, internet connectivity, distractions and productivity.
The town is looking very closely at co-working spaces as a solution to those issues.
“For us, it solves a lot of our problems because we have a lack of commercial space,” Kenny said. “It allows us to attract companies.”
Kenny said while the town is very interested in the idea, it doesn’t mean it is going to open such a space.
“The town’s involvement in that is an unknown at this point, but we are definitely encouraging it,” he said.
At the moment, society is still feeling the economic effects of COVID-19, and likely will be for some time. All the lasting effects remain to be seen.
“The unknown in this is there will likely be a small percentage of businesses, unfortunately, that go out of business Canada-wide,” Kenny said. “How does that affect the demand for commercial space, and that again goes back to the co-working.”
Will businesses need commercial space full time? Will they even be able share space in a COVID-19 world? Time will tell.
Shane MacDonald, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, Barrie Advance