East Gwillimbury employees, businesses try to get a handle on working from home

#stayathome: COVID-19 forces town employees, businesses to embrace home office

Yorkregion.com
April 16, 2020
Simon Martin

Laura Hanna is not used to working from home. The communications director for the Town of East Gwillimbury has found herself trying to perform her multiple duties from the cozy confines of her own home due to the COVID-19 pandemic. She’s not alone.

Offices everywhere are moving to remote work and the town is no different. East Gwillimbury now has 95 employees working from home. “We have approximately 150 employees,” she said. Firefighters, roads, water and wastewater operators are the essential workers that make up the staff still going ‘into’ work and are working rotational shifts. “The real superheroes are the IT department. They moved mountains to get us set up,” Hanna said.

The routine still takes getting use to, as Hanna rarely worked from home before the pandemic.

For fellow East Gwillimbury communications staffer Danielle Verneuil, the most difficult transition from working from home is the social one. She had gone to the Caribbean on vacation early in March and had to start the process a little earlier than everyone in the town as she had to do 14-days of self isolation. “The hardest adjustment to me was setting up your workspace and being limited to seeing your family,” she said. Verneuil said she attempts to keep one area of the house a designated work area and tries to take lunch at the same time every day.

Hanna said the pandemic has got the town to modernize some processes very quickly, which will serve it well in the future. “For instance, you can now file a building permit electronically,” Hanna said. The town was planning to do this but the pandemic gave them the impetus to do it quicker.

Already Hanna and other staff are looking to the future -- when the COVID-19 restrictions cease. She said working from home might become more regular for some staff. “I think there will be some flexibility when we go back to the new normal,” she said.

One thing Verneuil and Hanna agree on is that it’s hard to recreate the social dynamics of the office from home. “Eventually, people want to come back together. I think people miss their co-workers,” Hanna said.

The communications team for the town is in many virtual meetings and they were part of a 130 participant virtual town hall with town employees earlier this month where everyone got to hear what each department is doing.

East Gwillimbury Chamber of Commerce general manager Lauren Davie is also not accustomed to working from home. “Typically I went into the office every day,” she said. The chamber organizes lots of events and Davie is usually meeting people face-to-face. All that is out the window as Davie enters the world of Zoom meetings and phone calls. “It’s a new thing that I’ve had to learn,” she said. “People are going to be very comfortable with video conferencing when this over.”

Davie is trying to engage local businesses and give them the necessary resources to help navigate this new reality through webinars and lots of communication about local resources. Davie said the business community is rallying around each other at this time.