Teleworking: not a revolution in the workplace, but a real step forward for organizations!
What is unprecedented about the pandemic is the fact that, in many countries, companies have been obliged to use telecommuting to continue operating and to comply with government regulations.
Prior to this legal obligation, more than half of companies in Europe did not use telecommuting at all. And most of the others practised it very sparingly, and usually on a voluntary basis. As a result, many reluctant companies have had to take the plunge, and some have become so fond of it that they now see it as a sort of quasi-magical solution to their organizational and managerial problems.
However, these hopes run the risk of leading to disappointment, because they are based on the idea that technology alone can revolutionize the way work is organized. Yet, as the work of Eric Trist and the sociotechnical school has shown since the 1950s, the face of work does not depend :
- technology alone
- nor on individual and collective behavior alone,
- but both.
To return to current issues, this means that no technology can be successfully implemented in a company without taking into account its cultural and human dimensions.
Faced with the health situation, extreme caution has indeed been observed in most organizations. In May 2020, decontamination was not synonymous with a massive return to companies in many countries. They have maintained a high proportion of teleworking employees for months.
Telecommuting was a lifeline because it was forced and considered temporary. To perpetuate it, a change in management style is essential. Traditional "command and control" must give way to management by trust.
But a change of culture and attitude cannot be achieved overnight. Building an organization that decentralizes decision-making, and gives pride of place to delegation and autonomy, requires support and training for managers and employees alike. Without this in-depth overhaul, telecommuting will not be implemented... it will be remote control!
Companies face up to the telework imposed by confinement
Containment has shown that companies are capable of both the worst and the best, with :
- on the one hand, those who abused connection-tracking solutions,
- on the other, those who encouraged "empowerment", i.e. freeing up energies in the field to find and test solutions.
You can't ask a local manager to trust his team members if top management doesn't do the same.
The exemplary role played by leaders is always a source of inspiration, and provides a real impetus for transformation. Nor should we overlook the psychological difficulty: the loss of physical control, i.e. no longer having employees in one's field of vision, is destabilizing.
Companies need to give themselves time to learn the new codes. It's an illusion to think that telecommuting can go on just because it worked during the confinement period and saved the day for a large number of companies. Once again, a majority of employees have discovered this type of interaction in an unprecedented situation.
To acculturate teams to these new modes of operation, we first need to convince managers to take training and open up to other ecosystems. Exchanges between peers are frequent and relevant, but nurturing reflections within other spheres is also a way of developing one's own managerial posture.
Another obstacle to transformation is risk aversion. Disseminating a risk culture within teams is perhaps a way of developing a more flexible organization and breaking free from a rigid bureaucratic framework.
Last but not least, we need to involve managers and employees in internal or external networks that encourage co-development.
A different experience of teleworking for each employee
For many of the employees interviewed, telecommuting is still only a recent experience, or even a desirable horizon.
It represents a promise of autonomy, obviously a tempting one. They all hope it will enable them to :
- regain quality of life,
- better articulate their private and professional lives,
- reinvest in a family life that has been neglected for too long,
- make better use of time wasted in transport and meetings,
- regain room for manoeuvre, etc.
None of this is untrue, but it will only come about if, at the same time, managerial, cultural and human factors make this change possible.
To take just one example, in a company characterized by a highly hierarchical and bureaucratic management style, the fears aroused by the remoteness of employees are very likely to translate, on the contrary, into an increase in
- control,
- processes,
- reporting,
- remote meetings, etc.
On the other hand, in a company already driven by autonomy and delegation of authority, the adoption of telecommuting will come much more naturally.
Similarly, for employees unprepared for autonomy, the sudden disappearance of spatio-temporal frameworks can provoke anxiety and disengagement. For employees who have long been accustomed to taking the initiative, the introduction of a dose of remote working will lead to greater fulfillment.
To put it another way, the success of teleworking depends not so much on technological factors - the tools have long since matured - as on human and cultural factors.
The risks of teleworking
Loss of corporate culture
One of the risks of telecommuting is the erosion of corporate culture as a result of the widespread use of remote working.
A corporate culture is never entirely prescribed. It is also a living material, built up day by day through an infinite number of :
- spontaneous contacts,
- informal exchanges,
- experiences,
- and shared memories.
What will become of culture if the members of a department or team no longer see each other regularly?
As everyone has seen, during the first confinement, even with members of one's own family, the famous "zoom aperitifs" more often than not turned out to be disappointing, artificial and dry compared to real human contact.
The image is well-worn, but still true: the coffee machine remains one of the best tools for knowledge management, and a mini agora essential to the smooth running of the company.
The announcement by the PSA Group in France at the beginning of May 2020 that telecommuting would be the future of the workplace was risky, to say the least, and it is to be feared that it will lead to a gradual breakdown of the organization in the future. The company remains, fundamentally, a community of men and women brought together by a common project. But what will remain of this human adventure if colleagues are no more than pixels on a screen? We can see that :
- in too high a dose, telecommuting runs the risk of transforming the company into an unstable aggregate of service-providing employees who position themselves in their market with a mercenary spirit;
- if properly managed, telecommuting enhances the company's flexibility and agility;
- if not properly managed, it can lead to fragmentation and even liquefaction. And that, of course, would have devastating effects on business and performance, because a company's only differentiating resource is its human capital.
Everything else can be learned, copied or bought. Ultimately, the real question is one of commitment. It's an existential question about what it means to work together.
Some companies, such as Yahoo, IBM and Oracle, have put an end to their attempts to generalize telecommuting for this very reason. They have found that this form of organization substantially reduces the ability of their teams to work, innovate and create together. These precedents from the jewels in the crown of the digital economy should, to say the least, encourage caution!
The negation of human relations
By the end of 2020, telecommuting had become much less popular. In France, since the beginning of November 2020, only 45% of private-sector employees have teleworked, and only 23% have done so on a full-time basis1. There are many explanations for this lack of attraction to a work organization that has been heralded as the real revolution in the world of work2.
The first of these is, of course, the absence of any real reflection on the new forms of work requiring a rethink of managerial practices, as highlighted above. It's hardly surprising then that, in keeping with the old adage "if it ain't broke, it ain't broke", executives and managers have reverted to traditional pre-pandemic postures, demanding that employees return to the workplace in compliance with health regulations.
The second explanation has to do with the telecommuting situation itself: indeed, there's nothing more unequal than telecommuting, as family or personal environments differ greatly from one employee to the next.
But there's another explanation: the absence of a real human relationship when telecommuting. We wouldn't have anyone believe that the proliferation of videoconferencing, combined with so-called convivial moments such as virtual cafés or aperitifs, is likely to recreate those strong moments of exchange we've all known around a coffee machine or in other places and moments in the workplace.
The impoverishment of human relationships
Worse still, successive confinements have exacerbated the sense of isolation felt by many teleworkers, particularly young people, due to the impossibility of having normal social relations outside work as a result of the measures taken against the spread of the virus (travel permits, closure of cafés and restaurants...).
As a result, we are not surprised to note the sharp rise in psychological distress during successive confinements, particularly among employees: 41% of them and 58% of their managers claim to be suffering largely as a result of the telecommuting situation3.
What these signs show is that the impoverishment of human relations in the telecommuting situation is unbearable for most of us in the medium and long term. Of course, the point here is not to reject telecommuting out of hand, as it is undeniably a source of progress for people and the planet, but rather to suggestRather, we are suggesting that HR departments take into account the issue of employees' psychological safety when signing telecommuting agreements, which have been springing up in many companies over the past few months.
It's up to them to put these agreements through Socrates' three sieves: truth, goodness and usefulness, as Professor Lejoyeux suggests in his latest book4.
Risks that should not deter organizations
However, these risks associated with telework should not dissuade organizations from considering its implementation as a real step forward that goes far beyond its compulsory generalization for health reasons, which we witnessed worldwide last year.
This is only possible if certain guidelines are followed in the deployment of telecommuting within the organization:
- Start by focusing on the why of teleworking.
- Prepare for a gradual roll-out of teleworking.
- Make the culture compatible with telecommuting by developing management by trust.
- Listen to and educate management on their new role in the context of telework.
- Take into account employees' perceptions of teleworking, based on their personal and professional contexts.
- Use telecommuting as an opportunity to strengthen organizational agility.
- Prioritize human relations over technology.
- Accept a possible return to face-to-face work for the most vulnerable.
The need for a virtuous form of telecommuting
In conclusion, these are just a few of the many ideas we can come up with to implement a "virtuous" form of telecommuting, which needs to be tailored to each individual context. We must not give in to what has become a fad described by certain "gurus" since the first confinement as the "work revolution".
We mustn't be fooled by all the marvellous telecommuting technologies: we must never forget that technology is only a necessary condition, never a sufficient one! You can't change an organization by decree, as sociologist François Dupuy points out in his latest book5.
It's up to the people in charge of the organization to turn this hope for change into reality, by ensuring that telework doesn't become a source of frustration for employees.What neuropsychiatrist Boris Cyrulnik calls "wear and tear on the soul " 6.
Sources :
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Richer, M.: Déconfiner le travail à distance, Terranova Report, November 19, 2020 downloadable at https://tnova.fr/notes/deconfiner-le-travail-a-distance
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Besseyre des Horts, C.H.: "Le monde d'après : l'illusion de la refondation de l'entreprise, Entreprise & Carrières, n° 1484, June 8 to 14, 2020, p.22.
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France 2 TV news, November 19, 8 a.m.: https://www.francetvinfo.fr/sante/maladie/coronavirus/confinement/confinement-le-teletravail-cause-des-degats-psychologiques_4187367.html
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Pr. Lejoyeux, M.: Les 4 temps de la Renaissance, Le stress post-traumatique n'est pas une fatalité, JCLattès, October 2020, pp.85-86.
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Dupuy, F.: On ne change pas une entreprise par décret, Le Seuil, October 2020
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Article translated from French