Scholar’s Hub @ Home | Small town, short work week: Evaluating the effects of a compressed work week pilot in Zorra, Ontario, Canada

Zachary Spicer, Associate Professor, School of Public Policy and Administration

On September 1, 2020, in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, the township of Zorra, Ontario, Canada began a compressed work week pilot project designed to add flexibility for the municipal. This presentation provides information on the program’s design and implementation and reports on the findings of a unique survey designed to gauge attitudes of workers to the pilot. Results indicate that the pilot was received positively and as designed, managed to avoid many of the typically associated concerns with compressed work weeks — namely increased fatigue and staffing challenges. In addition to the evaluation of the pilot, insight is also provided into how organizational scale can aid in the development and design of public sector workplace innovation.

Zachary Spicer is an Associate Professor in the School of Public Policy and Administration at York University. He previously served as an Assistant Professor at Brock University, a Senior Policy Advisor for the Province of Ontario and the Director of Research for the Institute of Public Administration of Canada. He holds a PhD from the Department of Political Science at The University of Western Ontario and completed post-doctoral fellowships at Wilfrid Laurier University and the University of Toronto.

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