COVID @ 5
The COVID-19 pandemic changed much about life in St. Albert. This four-part series will examine the effects of those changes five years later.
Five years ago, many of us had never heard of Zoom or a Google Meet. If we wanted to hold a meeting, we met face-to-face in a real room.
But when the pandemic made in-person conversations a health risk, online meetings became an omnipresent part of our lives — and with them all the struggles of telling people that they were muted, off camera, out of focus, or (in the case of one luckless lawyer) transformed into a cat in the chat. St. Albert-area businesses have latched onto these new technologies to find new, more efficient way to work.
At home working
When the pandemic forced almost everyone to work from home, it started an essentially worldwide experiment into the effects of remote work.
This experiment had lasting effects, an October 2024 study by the U.S. Bureau of Labour Statistics found. Just 6.5 per cent of workers in the private sector worked from home in 2019. Remote work rose by about 11.8 per cent from 2019 to 2022 across all industries, including food services, construction, retail, and the arts. The tech sectors saw the biggest shift, with roughly 50 to 58 per cent of computer systems design and info-service workers working remotely by 2022, compared to 16 to 20 per cent in 2019.
The study found that a one per cent increase in remote work was associated with a 0.05 per cent increase in productivity, with the 2019-22 increase mentioned above linked to a roughly 1.1 per cent productivity boost.
“This suggests that the increase in remote work substantially contributed to productivity gains during the pandemic,” the study found, which it attributed to reduced costs for office rentals and utilities.
Canada saw a similar spike in remote work, Statistics Canada reports. About seven per cent of Canadians worked from home in January 2020. That peaked at 40 per cent in April 2020, and fell to 20 per cent by November 2023.
While construction workers still have to be onsite, Andrew Simonsmeier of Alberco Construction in St. Albert says his office staff now do about 80 per cent of their meetings online, with some working from home part-time.
“It’s purely convenience,” he said — it’s much easier to hop between meetings on a computer than it was to drive from site to site.
Simonsmeier said remote work has helped a lot of his staff find a better work-life balance. There’s been a swing back toward in-person meetings in construction, though, as those were better for perceiving body language and building relations through informal chats. Some companies might want staff back in the office because they think they’re slacking off at home, or because of worker’s compensation issues with remote worksites.
Sturgeon County CAO Travis Peter said many of his office staff had to move online during the pandemic. Most still work part time at home today.
“It has been a tremendous competitive advantage,” he said, as it has allowed the county to attract workers who live farther away from the county office in Morinville.
Peter said remote work has saved the county money, as it no longer has to rent a bunch of buildings to house its staff. Absenteeism is down (as you can be sick at home and still work), while employee happiness/engagement was up eight per cent. The shift to remote work also pushed the county to modernize, with many more services and records now available online.
Solar Alberta had to do a pretty hard pivot when COVID arrived, as all of its activities were in-person, said executive director Heather MacKenzie. Now, apart from the rare in-person mixer, everything the group does is online, with guests showing little interest in a return to face-to-face events.
“Solar Alberta is a provincewide organization,” she said, and moving online has let more people attend its talks, courses, and conferences.
“People have really shifted in how they’re doing training now.”
Remote work may also have changed driving habits. Statistics Canada estimated there were about 2.6 million fewer commuters in 2023 compared to 2016 because of remote work, which may have reduced greenhouse gas emissions from transportation and saved workers 55 minutes a day they otherwise would have spent on the road.
And it could make us more prepared for the next big emergency, Peter noted.
“If a pandemic happens tomorrow, we’d be ready to transition to online.”
