The return to the office: What will it look like?

Working from home has been all too common for many people throughout Saskatchewan over the past year.

With the province less than a month away from removing all COVID restrictions, a question remains when it comes to remote work: Will it continue?

Tara McKeown, the chief employee experience officer with Conexus Credit Union, thinks so.

She says the return to the office won’t happen overnight.

“People are going to need a bit of a transitionary time to figure out really what they are comfortable with,” McKeown said. “I think you’ll see everybody interacting just a little bit different.

“As we start to emerge from the pandemic, we will really learn how our employees want to work, and what produces the best quality work for our members.

“We were thrown into actually connecting through technology throughout the pandemic and I think you’ll see a continued use of that.”

There are roughly 1,000 people who work for Conexus and all the subsidiary companies attached to it. According to McKeown, roughly half of those people have been working from home for the past year.

The people who had the blessing — and curse — of working from home were largely in corporate service jobs.

Issues such as Internet mishaps, higher electricity bills and the struggle of separating work from life were common problems faced by many people over the span of the past year.

McKeown believes remote work offered many challenges as well as learning experiences.

“It was a really great learning experience to see what results we can actually produce when being remote from one another,” she said. “At the same time, similar to the rest of the world, I think we’re all getting a little tired of only interacting through Zoom and our computer monitors and we’re actually really excited to see people in person again.

“I think all of us are emerging from the pandemic a little bit different than how we went into it.”