After the teleworking wave, the French are regaining the taste for “working together” in the office. A survey even shows that we have (re)become the face-to-face European champions.
This is a survey by the real estate consulting firm JLL which confirms other studies which point in the same direction. Not that teleworking has fallen into oblivion, quite the contrary, but one does not prevent the other. Of course, we are talking about professions for which teleworking is possible such as management, administration, or even the service sector, to name a few. To date, some 4,000 agreements on teleworking from home have been signed in French companies, which does not prevent a return to basics.
>> Is it time to return to the office?
In France, we returned to the office, on average, three and a half days a week. There remains between one and two days of weekly work from home. The French therefore work three and a half days in the office compared to three days for the Swiss, second in the ranking, two and a half days for the British and the Spanish. This survey by JLL was conducted among 208 large companies around the world.
Reasons for returning to the office
Despite the great flexibility that teleworking offers in daily personal organization, we French need to get together with colleagues. Also need to have live monitoring of senior executives, the boss, the boss. Teleworking allows it but in a dehumanized way. Significant importance is also given to sharing the lunch break, which is less true, for example, for the British.
The real challenge for the HR manager, or the boss, is to convince the employees not to all come back at the same time. Many companies have reorganized in the face of the rise of teleworking, sometimes completely restructuring their offices. Which today makes the department head a “GO”, a nice organizer, to please everyone. From there to saying that the company is becoming a bit like Club Med again… we are not there yet.