AUSTIN FIDO

KAMLA Persad-Bissessar’s pioneering decision to be a work-from-home Prime Minister has been tacitly endorsed by the US Government Accountability Office (GOA).

Earlier this month, the US GAO issued a report on “telework,” the department’s preferred jargon for the flexible work arrangements more commonly referred to as “working from home.” The top-line finding was that working from home deepens the talent pool available to employers by increasing opportunities for the disabled, parents and caregivers, older workers, and two-career couples.

PM Persad-Bissessar is part of at least three of those categories by my count, so she is leading by example for a broad swath of the population who might see their economic fortunes transformed if more TT jobs were made available on a work-from-home basis.

Per Central Bank statistics, TT ended 2024 with a labour force participation rate (the percentage of the working-age population either employed or actively seeking employment) of 55.9 per cent, a figure that was trending upwards steadily over the course of 2024. A prime minister modelling arrangements that could help bring even more people into the national workforce is surely positive, especially if the PM is game for bringing change to notoriously intransigent public sector organisations.

The US GAO’s report cited analysis suggesting work-from-home policies during the covid19 pandemic were responsible for a 12 per cent rise in full-time employment among workers with disabilities. And the same report also cited a study that found a 12 per cent improvement in productivity among workers from home engaged in tasks that didn’t require group interaction.

The first of those stats would potentially boost TT’s efforts to get its labour force participation rate above 60 per cent (the unofficial benchmark for a thriving economy); the latter would (hopefully) improve the outcomes and effectiveness of the work being done. Ultimately, more people working better would be a useful step in the direction of the increased tax revenues the PM needs to facilitate her ambitious agenda for her government.

But why stop at working from home? One doesn’t have to look very hard on social media to find people grumbling not just about the PM’s reluctance to leave her house, but also questioning whether she is putting in a full week’s work from wherever it is she chooses to spend her days.

Count me among those fervently hoping that the PM is not clocking 40 hours per week on the job, because it raises the possibility she’s modelling yet another adjustment to working life that could benefit TT, socially and economically: the four-day work week.

Iceland is the world’s leading laboratory for experiments with a four-day work week. The Nordic nation started a pilot study in 2015 – signing up around 2,500 people to move to a shorter working week (without a smaller pay packet) – and has essentially never looked back.

Since 2020, it’s believed more than 50 per cent of Icelandic workers have transitioned to shorter working hours, a