More than 33% of P.E.I. civil servants want to work from home, survey finds

Officials with theP.E.I.government say work continues to reach itstarget of having one third of its employeeswork from home.

Earlier this year, Steven Myers, minister of transportation, infrastructure and energy, said the province had about 16 per cent of its employees working from home and the goal was to have a third of employeeswork from home, even after pandemic is over.

"It's absolutely still a target," said Myers."So now it's kind of up to the departments to figure out how to make it work, who can work from home, and more what that looks like."

He saidmore employees working from home would mean fewer cars on the road, and that would help the province meet some of its environmental goals.

Myers said a recent surveyconducted by the Public Service Commissionshowed well over 33 per cent of provincial employees would be interested in the option.

Myers said right now the province is sorting out logistics; everything from IT connectivityto infrastructure.

He's hopeful the work the province is doingnowwill help make it simpler forprivate sector employers to make similar moves with their own workforces.

"If they want to kind of use the same model, hopefully we'll have a lot of the homework done and the kinks worked out of what some of the issues are and what some of the costing of it would be," said Myers.

Once the system is established, Myers said,there will be some savingson things like rent, utilities, and cleaning. But there will be some added initial costs for things like office furniture and laptop computers, investments Myers said are overdue.

"Those are challenges that we probably should have tackled as a province, you know, 10years ago and we didn't," said Myers.

"So we're just a little bit behind, and I think as we catch up, that will be the costly part."

Officials with the Public Service Commission weren't able to provide a timeline on when the provinceexpects to see 33 per cent of the public service working from home.

It said work is currently underway with departments toimplementtelework agreements withemployeesover the long term, oneither apart- or full-time basis.

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