Four years after the start of the pandemic, teleworking is so anchored in our lives that its abbreviation, TT, has just entered the mainstream. Little Robert.
If this term is used more in France than here, Canada remains the undisputed champion of working at home. Workers spend almost twice as much time there as elsewhere in the world, 1.7 days per week, compared to 0.9 days in an average of 34 countries.
If it were up to them, employees would stay in the comfort of their homes even more often, according to the Global Survey Working Arrangements. This explains the growing tensions with employers who, for their part, want to bring them back to the office more often.
In the United States, lawsuits are increasing against companies that have ended teleworking in a discriminatory or anti-union manner, the newspaper recently reported. Washington Post1.
In Canada, the major federal public service unions announced in early May that they were planning a “summer of discontent” in response to Ottawa’s desire to impose three days in the office, instead of two2. Risk of storm and rain of grievances on the horizon…
What is the right dosage? Two days? Three ? Any further ? None ?
Forget that !
We are on the wrong track by focusing on the number of obligatory days in the office, as if the schedule dictated the work processes. It would make more sense to turn the question around and ask what tasks should be done at work or at home, in order to promote productivity.
Right now, many employees are setting their schedule around their personal lives: the kids’ soccer lesson, the doctor’s appointment, the dog walking. This flexibility certainly offers a big advantage for work-family balance… especially for young families who have had to settle far from work, due to the rise in real estate prices.
Although working from home can also be isolating, workers love it. Almost all of them also believe that they are as much or more productive (96%) and work as many if not more hours (92%) when they are remote, according to a study by the Interuniversity Research Center in Analysis of organizations (CIRANO) carried out with more than 10,000 Quebecers3.
Except that we must see broader than the simple question of productivity. It’s not enough for everyone to do their job efficiently at home, because a business is not a simple collection of individuals or teams working in isolation.
Of course, the pandemic has proven that we can stay connected thanks to technology. But there are limits to what you can do through Teams or Slack.
In virtual or hybrid mode, impromptu interactions with colleagues are compromised – you know, the famous discussions in the doorframe or around the coffee machine – reducing the informal feedback that is crucial for learning4.
In the era of remote working, we have seen managers take a narrower view, focusing on the task at hand, in the short term, rather than on the development of interpersonal relationships and skills, essential in the long term5.
In this context, many managers are concerned about the impact of teleworking on corporate culture and the ability to renew itself.
In April, the head of Nike rightly declared that teleworking had harmed creativity, explaining that it was difficult to come up with revolutionary shoes by doing “bold and disruptive innovation on Zoom “.
The ability to renew oneself also requires training the next generation.
However, research shows that teleworking, while it allows experienced employees to concentrate on their task, can leave new employees who lack supervision in the lurch. This effect is particularly pronounced among women, who are less likely to request and receive mentoring when they are not seated near their colleagues.6.
In short, if we let employees organize their schedules completely as they wish, we risk slowing down the development of young people and women. And we risk reinforcing inequalities.
But instead of thinking in terms of number of days in the office, we need to take the thinking further, based on key indicators to get the right picture (e.g.: problem-solving capacity, customer satisfaction). and reorganizing work based on tasks that are best done in the office (e.g., brainstorming) or at home (e.g., writing).
Nobody has the perfect recipe. It’s all a question of dosage. We will not brush aside the flexibility that the pandemic has given us. But companies must also be able to achieve their long-term goals.
The two can combine to make hybrid working the best of both worlds. Not the opposite.
1. Read “Suing your employer for not returning to the office”
2. Read “Federal public service: Unions united against returning to the office three days a week”
3. Consult the CIRANO study
4. Read “What Leadership Development Should Look Like in the Hybrid Era”
5. Consult a study on the evolution of management attitude (in English; subscription required)
6. Consult a study on the power of proximity between colleagues (in English)