PE­TER CHRISTO­PHER

The maxi-taxi strike this week has brought for­ward the need for a prop­er work from home pol­i­cy, giv­en the lo­gis­ti­cal and psy­cho­log­i­cal im­pact the strike had on the work­force.

Maxi Taxi dri­vers opt­ed to strike from Mon­day to Wednes­day, lead­ing to se­ri­ous con­cerns for many in T&T with­out ac­cess to per­son­al trans­porta­tion.

In­vari­ably, on­ly PTSC bus­es are cheap­er, which meant that for thou­sands of work­ers, par­ents and stu­dents, find­ing an al­ter­na­tive mode of trans­port is au­to­mat­i­cal­ly a greater ex­pense.

How­ev­er, it is not just a fi­nan­cial cost that is be­ing in­curred.

Ac­cord­ing to Daryl Joseph, Pres­i­dent of the Vir­ginia-based Em­ploy­ee As­sis­tance Pro­fes­sion­als As­so­ci­a­tion (EA­PA) and Man­ag­ing Di­rec­tor of Jos­al Con­sult­ing Lim­it­ed, the strike would have tak­en a men­tal toll on the trav­el­ling pub­lic as well.

He said, "Maxi-taxis grind­ing to a halt for three days throws peo­ple’s lives in­to pure chaos. For thou­sands of work­ers try­ing to get from coun­try to town, a tran­sit strike takes a mas­sive toll on both their peace of mind and their abil­i­ty to get things done. The men­tal toll is re­al. A strike com­plete­ly strips away any sense of con­trol over your day. The stress starts the night be­fore and hits hard by 4:00 AM."

Joseph, a psy­chol­o­gist, who has push­ing to rev­o­lu­tionise EAP ser­vices across the Caribbean since 2011, said the sit­u­a­tion could lead to em­ploy­ee ex­haus­tion even be­fore they find a way to make it to work.

"Stand­ing on the Route or at City Gate for hours, watch­ing packed ve­hi­cles pass you by, spikes your stress lev­els be­fore the work­day even starts. Peo­ple are ar­riv­ing at work al­ready stressed out, ir­ri­ta­ble, and run­ning on emp­ty," said Joseph, who al­so point­ed out that those who found them­selves spend­ing more to get to work would al­so be fac­ing fi­nan­cial stress.

"When stan­dard trans­port van­ish­es, peo­ple are forced to re­ly on PH cars or Rideshares. Cough­ing up un­bud­get­ed cash just to get to a job (that most peo­ple may not even like) cre­ates im­me­di­ate, heavy fi­nan­cial anx­i­ety," he added.

The psy­chol­o­gist said work­ers may feel guilt and para­noia de­spite not be­ing at fault.

He said, "Even though the sit­u­a­tion is en­tire­ly out of their hands, work­ers wor­ry con­stant­ly about look­ing un­re­li­able to their boss­es or los­ing a day's pay."

As a re­sult, work­ers who do show up may not be able to give their best, lead­ing to lost pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, he ex­plained.

Joseph said, "The em­ploy­ees who do man­age to show up are of­ten just phys­i­cal­ly present (pre­sen­teeism). Their brains are fried from the morn­ing com­mute, and they’re al­ready stress­ing about how the hell they’re go­ing to get back home in the evening. When key peo­ple are miss­ing or dis­tract­ed, en­tire de­part­ment work­flows stall."

The EA­PA Pres­i­dent said in this case, man­age­ment should have put mea­sures in place to help their staff as op­posed to ap­pear­ing puni­tive.

"In­stead of get­ting down on em­ploy­ees about be­ing late, smart or­gan­i­sa­tions piv­ot to be­ing flex­i­ble, " he said, "Flex the hours: For­get the strict 8-to-4 clock. Let peo­ple come in lat­er once the morn­ing rush clears, or shift the fo­cus en­tire­ly to just get­ting the day’s tasks done, re­gard­less of the hours."

Joseph al­so urged man­agers to con­sid­er staff car­pools or even cov­er the costs to help al­le­vi­ate some of the pres­sures that may be faced by work­ers.

'En­cour­age em­ploy­ees who dri­ve to act as a "neigh­bour’s keep­er" and pick up strand­ed cowork­ers along their route. Help cov­er the cost: For es­sen­tial, front­line staff who ab­solute­ly must be on­site, of­fer a tem­po­rary trans­port al­lowance to cov­er those in­flat­ed PH prices," said Joseph, who ad­di­tion­al­ly added that even giv­ing em­ploy­ees sim­ple no­tices of as­sur­ance could go a long way.

Joseph ex­plained, "Give them some breath­ing room: A quick email from lead­er­ship say­ing, "We know things are crazy, no one is get­ting pe­nalised for be­ing late,' in­stant­ly low­ers the col­lec­tive anx­i­ety in the room. Once that fear is gone, peo­ple can ac­tu­al­ly fo­cus on their work. "

Im­por­tant­ly, Joseph al­so stat­ed that jobs that could fa­cil­i­tate re­mote work should do so in this case.

He said, " Let them work from home: If a job on­ly re­quires a lap­top and a phone, man­date re­mote work un­til the strike blows over. Save them the agony of the com­mute."

The Hu­man Re­source Man­age­ment As­so­ci­a­tion of Trinidad & To­ba­go al­so shared a sim­i­lar sen­ti­ment when con­tact­ed about the sit­u­a­tion on Tues­day, not­ing that it high­light­ed the need for a Work From Home pol­i­cy.

"Yes, the on­go­ing maxi taxi strike com­plete­ly un­der­scores the ur­gent need for a clear, stan­dard­ised Work From Home (WFH) pol­i­cy in Trinidad and To­ba­go," said HRMATT Pres­i­dent Cavelle Joseph–St. Omer in state­ment from the or­gan­i­sa­tion which was sent to Busi­ness Guardian.

The state­ment con­tin­ued, "As thou­sands of com­muters find them­selves strand­ed along ma­jor trans­port hubs like City Gate and the East/ West Cor­ri­dor, the sud­den dis­rup­tion high­lights how vul­ner­a­ble the lo­cal work­force is to trans­porta­tion-based crises."

HRMATT added, "The struc­tur­al im­pacts dri­ving this dis­cus­sion in­clude:

1. Proof of Con­cept for Busi­ness Con­ti­nu­ity

The strike serves as an im­me­di­ate test­ing ground for cor­po­rate flex­i­bil­i­ty. Or­gan­i­sa­tions that lack a re­mote work frame­work suf­fer heavy pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and fi­nan­cial loss­es be­cause em­ploy­ees can­not phys­i­cal­ize their pres­ence at the of­fice. Con­verse­ly, for­mal­is­ing a WFH pol­i­cy en­sures that op­er­a­tions re­main re­silient against trans­port shut­downs.

2. Pro­tect­ing Work­ers from Eco­nom­ic Penal­ties

Un­der cur­rent in­dus­tri­al norms, em­ploy­ers are not legal­ly ob­lig­at­ed to com­pen­sate work­ers who can­not re­port to du­ty. With­out an of­fi­cial, recog­nised WFH pol­i­cy, strand­ed em­ploy­ees face a dou­ble penal­ty: they lose a day's wages or are forced to ex­haust their per­son­al leave, even though they are will­ing and able to ex­e­cute their du­ties dig­i­tal­ly, or they are will­ing to re­port to du­ty but are un­able to be­cause of trans­porta­tion is­sues.

3. High­light­ing Macro­eco­nom­ic In­ter­de­pen­dence

Lo­cal econ­o­mists have re­peat­ed­ly not­ed that trans­porta­tion dis­rup­tions di­rect­ly dent the na­tion­al Gross Do­mes­tic Prod­uct (GDP) due to lost hours on the road. A flex­i­ble re­mote pol­i­cy func­tions as an eco­nom­ic shock ab­sorber, pre­vent­ing a lo­calised tran­sit dis­pute from es­ca­lat­ing in­to an of­fice pro­duc­tiv­i­ty cri­sis."

HRMATT said it "ac­tive­ly ad­vo­cates for the wide­spread im­ple­men­ta­tion of clear hy­brid and re­mote work mod­els with­in both the pub­lic and pri­vate sec­tors to al­le­vi­ate work­place dis­rup­tions."

Like Joseph, the as­so­ci­a­tion al­so called for man­age­ment to be mind­ful of the chal­lenges cre­at­ed for staff in the sce­nario, as it called for "mod­ern hu­man re­source prac­tices to in­su­late the work­force from tran­sit dis­rup­tions like the maxi taxi strike. “

HRMATT made sug­ges­tions to al­le­vi­ate hard­ship for af­fect­ed work­ers apart from re­mote work, which large­ly echoed Joseph’s sug­ges­tions.

This in­clud­ed " Ac­ti­vat­ing cri­sis-proof HR frame­works to piv­ot op­er­a­tions swift­ly and pro­tect base­line pro­duc­tiv­i­ty dur­ing sud­den macro­eco­nom­ic shocks. En­act­ing non-puni­tive at­ten­dance poli­cies so work­ers re­liant on pub­lic tran­sit are not pe­nalised for late ar­rivals caused by the strike. Pro­vid­ing psy­cho­log­i­cal safe­ty frame­works that ex­plic­it­ly re­move em­ploy­ee anx­i­ety sur­round­ing job se­cu­ri­ty dur­ing na­tion­al trans­port crises and en­cour­ag­ing peer-to-peer car­pool­ing ini­tia­tives with­in or­gan­i­sa­tions to help strand­ed col­leagues get to es­sen­tial phys­i­cal sites safe­ly, and ap­ply­ing trau­ma-in­formed work­force man­age­ment to ac­tive­ly mit­i­gate em­ploy­ee burnout and stress dur­ing ma­jor struc­tur­al dis­rup­tions.”

For­mer In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor Dr Var­ma Deyals­ingh felt it was time for the pol­i­cy to be ac­tioned, es­pe­cial­ly as the first draft of the re­mote work pol­i­cy for T&T's Civ­il Ser­vice was re­ceived by the then Min­istry of Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion over two years ago and re­viewed, but it was nev­er made of­fi­cial pol­i­cy.

Dr Deyals­ingh, a psy­chi­a­trist, said, “The Unions should have come on board and pushed for this change. The traf­fic woes ex­pe­ri­enced by the com­mut­ing pub­lic could eas­i­ly hap­pen again. This can shut down gov­ern­ment of­fices. This Ad­min­is­tra­tion needs to move quick­ly on a work-at-home pol­i­cy.

It would be a step in the right di­rec­tion and would af­fect a lot of is­sues like the on­go­ing traf­fic sit­u­a­tion, lim­it­ed of­fice space, per­son­al sav­ings on tran­sit cost , en­vi­ron­men­tal ben­e­fits with less ex­haust pol­lu­tion, and now, with the po­lit­i­cal dis­cord in Iran af­fect­ing the glob­al en­er­gy sup­ply, any means to de­crease our fu­el de­mands would help.”

He added, "This Maxi taxi strike ac­tion should gal­vanise the gov­ern­ment to ex­pe­dite the civ­il ser­vice work-from-home pol­i­cy. It was al­ready on the draw­ing board and would in­di­cate a pos­i­tive re­sponse from this present regime to car­ry over poli­cies from the pre­vi­ous regime, once it is ben­e­fi­cial to the peo­ple."

The Busi­ness Guardian reached out to Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion and Ar­ti­fi­cial In­tel­li­gence Do­minic Smith for an up­date on the mat­ter, but did not re­ceive a re­sponse.