NEWSDAY · BitDepth1375 Narration 10 - 10 - 2022

BitDepth#1375

MARK LYNDERSAY

WHEN THE Prime Minister declared after the reading of the budget September 26 that the Government wasn't pursuing a work-from-home (WFH) policy, it was a state-level rejection of the concept.

This followed a March statement by former agriculture minister Clarence Rambharat that a WFH policy was being pursued.

In July, Public Administration Minister Allyson West promised that the Government's WFH policy would be completed by year-end and rolled out to all ministries.

If West and Rambharat were true to their word, the Government's WFH policy is "No." Which would be the most succinct government policy statement ever issued.

What is the Government giving up by refusing to consider WFH arrangements for public servants with any seriousness or enthusiasm?

The Telework Enhancement Act of 2010 codifies how remote work in done in the US public service.

Among the specifications it outlines is the difference between telework (employee reports to the office on an infrequent but defined schedule) and remote work, which becomes the office, and headquarters is visited only when required.

At a June 2021 webinar, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) posed these quite relevant questions:

"What has been learned about remote working in this last year? How do public servants expect to be working in the future? How can governments design new policies today to bridge the gap?"

Productivity

At an Amcham webinar in July 2021 (https://bit.ly/3Memmul), Chief Personnel Officer Daryl Dindial explained the situation the public service faced.

"In the first wave, there was a significant loss of productivity, since the system just was not there. Over a few months or so, a lot of people started to use and understand the importance of maximising the technologies available to them and there was a better understanding of how we could use what exists to continue work, but there are still significant challenges with monitoring and evaluation of what happens when people are not [present] at any workspace."

Is the Prime Minister right when he notes that, "Some people not even working in the office"?

An inability to establish an effective correlation between the presence of labour and measurable output isn't just a problem in WFH scenarios.

Remote work monitoring solutions like mouse click, key-press monitoring and remote document surveillance have only created environments of annoyance and resentment that parallel the "massa coming" response to in-person supervisor surveillance.

Where performance indicators are present in the workplace and agreed on between management and labour, the tone and delivery of work fundamentally change.

The OECD found, "The association of presence with productivity is being replaced in most knowledge-based (and office-based) workplaces with a focus on outputs and outcomes."

"Modern management should care less about the number of hours in the office than they do about the quality and