My Permanent ‘Workcation’
Mark Leger is the editor of Huddle. This is a new weekly column that will feature opinion, analysis and reflections on Huddle stories and podcasts and business news in the region.
As I write this, I’m at the Huddle office at the Red Rose Tea Building in Saint John, a short walk from my house uptown. I’ll soon jump on a video call with co-workers in different places, some working from home, some not. Then I’ll pack up my laptop and work at my home office once my kids get back from school.
Then I’ll take a break from work, lace up my sneakers and go for a road run or a trail run in a nearby park. At night after the kids go to bed, I’ll park myself in a comfortable chair in my living room and do another hour or so of work before bed.
It’s part of my permanent “Workcation,” as USTATION and the Saint John Region Chamber of Commerce might call it, a new pilot program with $170,000 in funding from the provincial government. Of course, it’s not me they’re thinking of, but people like me from other places, people for whom location doesn’t really matter when it comes to doing their jobs.
In a Huddle story this week by Liam Floyd, Chamber CEO David Duplisea and USTATION CEO Glen Hicks explained that this program is their attempt to capture some of the global “remote workforce” that can work from anywhere, so why not here, especially people in bigger centres who would embrace a lower-cost, slower-paced but urban place with easy access to natural amenities.
“The pandemic has shown everyone how vulnerable we are,” said Duplisea. “This is the perfect time for us to get out there. The whole province itself is a wonderful attraction for people trying to get out of the large cities and into the smaller cities that have a somewhat urban lifestyle. We play that card very well in terms of the work-life balance that you can have here in the Saint John region.”
I remember Hicks first pitching the concept nearly two years ago at a City of Saint John growth committee meeting and he’s now partnered with the chamber on a pilot that will try to bring 20 people here in the first year. As the founder and CEO of USTATION, a membership-based company creating a network of inspiring, tech-enabled spaces and technologies to help people boost productivity, he understands this highly-mobile workforce, and he believes if we can just get them here for a visit, they’ll stay.
“Seeing the work anywhere trend, we thought that if people can work anywhere, why wouldn’t you want to live here in the Maritimes?” said Hicks. “If people experience what it’s like to live here, they’ll want to stay, We know once you try it, you won’t want to leave.”
The “Workcation” concept is the 2021 pandemic version of a pitch that the province – and other small places like it – has been making for decades to try and combat population decline and an aging population.
Huddle has been interested in the “work from anywhere” story that has piqued everyone’s interest during the pandemic. Last year, we did a feature story about how co-working spaces are important for the movement, and we did a story and a podcast about “digital nomads” like Hilary Smith, who moved home and brought her job with her.
It’s too early to tell whether “remote workers” would move in great numbers to the Maritimes; if the chamber/USTATION pilot program can be scaled. Whether or not this works as a population growth strategy, I think the “work from anywhere” trend will produce changes in how many of us work, making “digital nomads” of people once bound by 9-5 days in office buildings.
In early January, Huddle reporter Inda Intiar wrote a story about a report that showed that two-thirds of companies with offices in downtown Moncton still had most or all of their employees working remotely months into the pandemic.
Many companies said they were planning to implement a hybrid model, in which staff will keep splitting their time between the office and their home.
“A lot of them say they’re going to keep a certain percentage of their people working remotely long term,” said John Wishart, CEO of the Chamber of Commerce of Greater Moncton.
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In the hallway to my office in the Red Rose Tea Building, there are a series of pictures more than 100 years old of men and women at work, tasting tea, doing paperwork and packaging products for shipment.
They all needed to be here in this building, in this city, to do their jobs. I don’t. I could be at home, in a café, in Moncton, Halifax or even Toronto.
When I came home from Toronto for a job here 25 years ago, I didn’t think it would be a permanent move, but I stayed and built a great life here, one that includes great flexibility in my work life. Hicks, Duplisea and the provincial government hope to lure people here on a “Workcation” and then they’ll decide to stay here too.
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