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BCBUSINESS.CA SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2020 BCBUSINESS 43 a privilege, offered only to employees with good track records and cohesive teams, says Sandy McIntosh, Telus's chief human resources officer, who joined in the midst of the transition in 2007. This was key to getting buy-in from a largely unionized workforce, she says; as long as workers saw it as voluntary and advantageous to partici- pants—especially those with long commutes—it was hard to contest. "As we all got more comfortable that we were not sacrificing productivity or engagement, then we opened it up," McIntosh says, to all employees whose positions lent themselves to a remote setup. "Eventually we flipped the question around, to who has to come into the office?" By 2011, the company reached its goal of approximately three-quarters of its workforce being mobile. Having reduced the real estate footprint of its primary administrative build- ings by more than 60 percent since 2009, Telus estimates it saves $50 million a year. A mobile worker will still have an office or service shop they drop into from time to time, but none of these work- places could accommodate all the employees attached to them at once. (For example, 250 staff are expected to call the planned Telus Ocean building in Victoria their "office" once it's completed in 2024, but there won't be that many workstations on the premises.) Telus doesn't pay work- ers for use of space in their homes, but it does supply laptop computers and other hardware and software tools as needed. It subsidizes work- ers' high-speed Internet up to $35 a month (on top of the employee discount for Telus's own services) and offers a $50 annual stipend for office sup- plies. Further, employees can take advantage of corporate discounts with suppliers such as Staples and Steelcase. The biggest challenge in implementing Work Styles, McIntosh says, wasn't around logistics but management. "We had to take a real leap of faith, asking our team leaders to employ some trust, holding people accountable in terms of how they serve their customer," she explains. "Just those everyday leader- ship training and behaviours that you would require in the office, we've really had to double down on that because we're not getting to physically see everyone down the hall. We've shifted the focus to out- comes over time at desk." Once the company went all- in on Work Styles, the opposite problem emerged. "Lead- ers didn't know how to tell workers when to come back in periodically" for performance reviews, strategy sessions and other collaborative events, McIntosh says. Now it felt like an imposition on team mem- bers to summon them to the office. Supervisors had to learn to rein in their team members' autonomy when it wasn't work- ing, MacIntosh adds. "There is a balance to strike." There are rules around the home office, too: it has to be in a designated quiet space, where other family members aren't traipsing through and confidential conversations can be held. Sensitive informa- tion can't be left out on desks or onscreen for others to see (employees may even have spouses who work for the com- petition, remember). Staff with small children must have child care, though this stricture was relaxed during the disruption of COVID-19. Of course, Work Styles proved an invaluable asset for Telus when the pandemic hit. Company operations didn't so much as miss a beat when offices closed. A staff survey in May revealed a sense of gratitude that their health and safety were protected, McIntosh notes. Telus claims other benefits from the pro- gram, too, from greenhouse- gas reductions to improved employee engagement. McIntosh advises other employers considering a move away from a centralized office format to take advantage of the COVID lockdown to get feedback from employees and managers, gather insight and line up a strategy behind a specific end goal. "Right now you have a living lab pilot," she points out. Set up a team to manage the transition, make choices around the technology, HR, governance and so on. And keep com- municating with the team throughout. Adopting a program like Work Styles is easier said than done; Telus rival Rogers Communications launched a planned five-year rollout of its Sharespace program in 2015, only to quietly scale it back a couple of years later. From the employee's perspective, Yaworsky stresses the importance of maintaining a personal connection with her coworkers, even if it's over a video call. Some sessions are less work meetings than virtual social gatherings, she says. With most of her five- member core team, which manages corporate giving and volunteer programs, based in Toronto, she's gone years in some cases know- ing colleagues only from text exchanges, phone calls and video meetings. "Height is always a big surprise when you finally meet someone in person," she says with a laugh. • A S K A L E A D E R WHAT'S THE BIGGEST LESSON YOU'VE LEARNED FROM THE PANDEMIC? One of the big- gest lessons is the importance of involv- ing employees in occupational health and safety. As businesses began to reopen during the initial phases of the BC Restart Plan, it was so important to gain the confidence of employees to get them back to work. We saw businesses succeed when the COVID-19 Safety Plan process involved workers as much as possible to ensure their concerns were heard and addressed. – ANNE NASER, president and CEO, WorkSafeBC