In France, employees as a whole benefit from a fairly high degree of autonomy. Almost two-thirds of them may take a break from work for an hour or two for personal reasons. Almost half of them can take one or two days off without anticipation. And nearly 40% of French employees have the freedom to decide the start and end time of their working day. It is INSEE which paints this portrait of the French at work in a study published in recent days.
But autonomy has a downside. The more free you are in the organization of your work, the more you risk seeing it spill over into your private life. Thus, nearly half of French employees are sometimes required to modify their hours to meet the demands of their work and 30% were contacted during their free time for professional reasons during the last two months.
The most autonomous, but also the most disturbed in their private life are, not surprisingly, the executives. Almost all of them can, for example, interrupt their work for a few hours to meet personal constraints. But, with them, the work is constantly overflowing. All executives, without exception, says INSEE, have already been contacted for their work in their free time.
INSEE notes differences among employees in terms of autonomy. Women and immigrants say they have less latitude than others in the organization of their work. These differences, explains INSEE, can be explained in part by the type of job held, of course, but not only. Thus among executive employees, 72% of women can decide their working hours, compared to 81% of men. Another difference: those over 55 have more autonomy and are less disturbed in their private life than the youngest. Privilege of age.
France also has specificities compared to other European countries. INSEE notes that French employees are disturbed less often than others in their free time. Barely a third of French employees experience work intrusions into personal life when, in Sweden, no less than 60% of employees are called upon by their company during their evenings, weekends or holidays.