par Romain bendavid
The progression of telework in just five years is dizzying. In 2019, a year before the health crisis, only 4% of employees resorted to it at least once a month. At the end of 2024, this proportion reached 25%, with an average frequency of two days per week. Remote work therefore constitutes a marker of post-Cavid professional transformations.
A practice at the heart of new success criteria
The new relationship to work is characterized in particular by the greater place granted, behind income, to qualitative dimensions such as autonomy in working time management or aspiration to a better balance between private and professional life. These dimensions are ahead of those more statutory prospects for hierarchical progression. It is now up to work to adapt to everyone’s life when the reverse has long prevailed. In other words, work becomes a means more than an end. Consequently, the codes of success are rebatus. The possibility of resorting to a distance work symbolically replaces the possession of an angle office.
Towards a return to square one?
However, this practice recently returned to the center of the debate between continuing post-Cavid transformations and returning to the old model. Several signals bear witness to a desire to sound “the end of the recess” and to be less conciliatory vis-à-vis an organization which would be likely to harm the commitment. Teleworking being more acclaimed by young people, the subject often consists in resuming traditional criticism around the alleged laziness of this age group. Between the current of this prejudice, let us recall, for example, that 71 % of young people wish to create their business. This movement was driven by large American groups (Amazon, Google, Tesla, Ubisoft, etc.). The credit granted to it in France is partly explained by the symbol of success and innovation that the United States continues to embody.
While the first triennial agreements signed in the wake of the COVIR soon expired, a study carried out in 2024 with managers shows that more than a quarter of the interviewees observe tensions related to telework in their business. In parallel, connoted expressions were used by decision -makers. Nicolas Sarkozy said for example recently that “telework is TV, it’s not work (sic)”.
However, there does not seem to be (yet) to question general. The retropedalages come mainly from companies that had been daring by granting a majority of days of telework. 70% of leaders also consider that it represents more progress than a regression. And when we project ourselves over the next five years, 78% believe that it will be more practiced in 2030 than today.
For or against telework: productivity impacts
The benefits received from telework are plural. In terms of an employer brand, he is one of the first questions asked by executives during an interview. While the balance of power is a little less favorable to employees, it offers an alternative to HRD allowing to alleviate a frustration linked to a lower than that expected. The absence of teleworking is also the first reason for resignation, tied with dissatisfaction with management. It even stands out in mind among the active ingredients having access to it. It is therefore quite easy to anticipate the negative reputational impact if companies returned back. In mirror, the culture of “presenteeism” consisting in showing that one does not count its hours, without necessarily working more, a guarantee of greatest productivity?
Teleworking also saves considerable time in terms of transportation, helping to mitigate the mental load. 30% of assets estimate that their home work journey has a negative impact on their QVT while 70% consider that the level of arduousness resulting from this journey weighs in their choice to apply or stay in a business.
The challenge of corporate culture, especially for young employees
While absenteeism at work remains high and has not found its level of pre -crisis, telework is also correlated with health indicators. Remote workers have a globally less altered state of health than non-television-makers with access (31 %, compared to 37 %). They also have a slightly lower risk of depression (17 %, compared to 20 %) and are less affected by a chronic disease (24 %, against 28 %) and sleep disorders (40 %, compared to 44 %). Finally, on an economic level, a backtrack would imply reorganizing the workspaces, many companies that have reduced the areas of their offices to go to flex office.
In return, several fields relating to this organization require optimizations. Individual, telework is undeniably an isolation accelerator. There is also a frustration residing in the difficulty of having his work recognized, even though the issue of recognition constitutes a heel of Achilles of French managerial culture. This organization also delays the acquisition of a corporate culture for young employees, who is absolutely difficult to integrate into it taking into account their distancing from collective institutions. Remote work can finally strengthen hyperconnection conducive to the scrambling of the boundaries between professional and personal life, against the tide of its initial ambition.
New cleavages
More broadly, teleworking is at the origin of new cleavages within a society which does not lack. Social divide is the most visible, 65% of people with it being executives. In companies where executives and non-cadres rub shoulders, this organization has been able to arouse a feeling of iniquity among the latter who have not been offered alternative developments. However, their expectations in terms of balance between private and professional life are just as important. If the four -day week, which concerns all employees has been experienced in certain structures, we are still far from generalization. In addition, this organization is more complicated to set up in companies whose activity requires a presence of the workforce every day of the week.
A genre cleavage can also be observed since women use it a little more than men. In parallel, the telework did not lead to a better distribution of domestic tasks. As in the past with the arrival of household appliances in homes (“Moulinex releases women!”), There is a risk that teleworking will be unscrewed and becoming a means allowing women to simplify their “double day”.
In addition, many actions relating to the employer brand highlight the possible number of days in teleworking. However, these are mainly messages sent to young recruits, older employees being less affected by this practice. Finally, there are inequalities within “teleworkers” according to the quality of the home workspace, the presence or not of children in the home or the possibility of isolating oneself from the noise …
At the heart of aspirations
In the end, despite still necessary improvements, the practice of telework seems to be a fait accompli. Five years after its acceleration, it remains at the heart of the aspirations of employees and their desire to be more independent in the management of their working time. The implementation of remote work is based above all on a confidence contract between managers and their teams. Its main obstacle lies in the still very vertical organization of companies where a perception dominates by the absence of control, the work will be poorly done. Confidence is however a source of a lasting commitment.
Roman Ben David is an expert associated with the Jean-Jaurès Foundation and directed the “Work Experience” pole for 10 years at Ifop
