Is teleworking in the workplace under threat? "In France, management is too vertical and based on control"

Three Société Générale unions are calling on employees to strike on Friday to maintain their quota of teleworking days, which management wants, in most cases, to reduce from two to one per week.

Democratized since the first lockdown in March 2020 during the coronavirus health crisis, teleworking in companies was only around 3% before this date, recalls this Friday on RMC Jean-Claude Delgènes, founder of the firm Technologia and author of Osez le télétravail! "We went from 3% to 36% in a very short time," he says, estimating that this practice has entered "a little by breaking into our lives" with a great delay compared to other European countries.

"The advantage is that we have gained ten years of digital maturity in a few months," he notes.

"Agreements authorizing at least two days of teleworking per week are the most frequent in 2023. Since 2022, more moderate formulas, such as one day per week, have been increasing. And agreements offering three or more days of teleworking per week have been increasing in number since 2020. In 2023, they represent two out of ten agreements," reports Dares .

So why have companies, like Société Générale and Ubisoft (the French video game giant, editor's note) decided several months ago to go back and reduce the number of teleworking days their employees spend?

The consequence of poor management in particular, replies Jean-Claude Delgènes. "In France, we have a 'Louis XIV' style of management: highly centralized, vertical, based on control. This type of management is contradictory to the demands of teleworking: you have to show empathy, trust, and sometimes compassion," he analyzes on Apolline Matin . "Managers have not been trained enough."

What about the performance of remote workers? Management is always the culprit, according to the author. "If you're poorly managed, you're less productive. It's like the Tour de France in a peloton: people pull towards each other, there's collective emulation. It's the same with remote working: the group effect pulls people towards each other. If you don't compensate with good management, you experience a significant loss in productivity. Studies have proven this," argues Jean-Claude Delgènes.

According to him, employees are all the more right to want to maintain teleworking since it represents a gain in terms of salary. "It represents between 5 and 8% increase in purchasing power: you don't go out to eat, you don't spend on gas for your car." Some companies, for their part, pay their employees additional euros depending on the number of teleworking days completed per month to cover, in particular, the cost of electricity.

"We have gone from the right to telework to the obligation to telework, to avoid being in intensified places, with promiscuity, heat, noise," analyzes Jean-Claude Delgènes.

According to Jean-Claude Delgènes, companies can't suddenly backtrack because of "flex office" anyway. "We have 1,000 people and are giving away 500 positions." For example, Société Générale employees are adding to this strike day an "All on site operation" on Thursday, July 3, intended to demonstrate the logistical difficulties if employees all returned to their workplaces at the same time.

The latter continues his analysis: "Teleworking is really linked to the management of workspaces. Companies don't know how to do it and believe that this interlude must be ended. They feel that they are losing a management lever."