Road work has seriously impacted human resources which consequently have repercussions on productivity. However, two recently published surveys—the first on members of the Ordre des conseillers en ressources humaines agréés (CRHA) and the second on salaried Quebec employees—revealed that not many businesses are protecting themselves against the negative repercussions caused by the road work.
The Ordre des conseillers en ressources humaines agréés (CRHA) provided this article on road work.
It is an autumn of orange traffic cones in Montréal
A little all over Quebec, road work has become part of a worker’s everyday life. In Montréal, according to the Journal de Montréal, downtown city employees are working on 599 projects to the detriment of traffic while other districts have 390 projects underway. The worst of it all is that we are getting ready for a “historic” traffic-filled autumn. The major obstructions are on the Saint-Pierre interchange (the triangle formed by the Turcot interchange, the Champlain Bridge, and the Bonaventure autoroute), on autoroute 720, and a section of the Louis-H. Lafontaine Tunnel.
Almost one third of the CRHAs believe the road work is causing “very frequent” delays and over 50% believes this is an “occasional” occurrence. But everyone agrees that salaried employees dealing with traffic jams are often really stressed, increasingly irritable, and more tired.
However, the CRHAs believe these impacts are causing more loss in productivity than only affecting salaried employees. Bertrand Lalonde, CRHA and director of human resources at Lavo, states, “We realized that it creates less Zen employees. Someone losing half an hour in traffic needs to decompress before starting work, which delays meetings, and then there is also the race to beat evening traffic. People don’t want late meetings because they want to leave before everyone else does.” These are small things that accumulate over the months and affect a company’s overall productivity.
A necessary evil for employees
Employees are not ready to change their habits to avoid getting caught in traffic. Almost three quarters of respondents would not accept a salary reduction if it meant reducing their commute time while 83% would not opt for a different means of transportation to avoid the frustrations. “Certainly there is an economic cost to not having an efficient transportation network, the cities need to act.” Indicates Sophie Bazinet, CRHA and HR business partner of Business Development Bank of Canada’s Quebec region. “At the same time, it is a question of culture: plenty of people still take their car.”
If companies want to limit the fallout, it is up to them to adjust.
However, nearly 75% of CRHAs indicated that their companies had not taken any measures against reducing these negative impacts. “With us, we offer little things like the possibility of having flexible hours or making up for lost time in the same day.” explains André Bisson, CRHA and director of human resources at Héroux-Devtek. “We promote using public transportation and having conference calls. It isn’t that complicated to put in place: people organize themselves naturally. Our company offers the flexibility to do so.”