Teleworking: not a revolution in the workplace, but a real step forward for organisations!
What is unprecedented about the pandemic is the requirement for companies to use teleworking to continue operating and to comply with government instructions in many countries.
Prior to this legal obligation, more than half of companies in Europe did not use teleworking at all. And the rest practised it, for the most part, very moderately and most often on a voluntary basis. Many reluctant companies have therefore had to take the plunge, and some have become so fond of it that they now see it as a sort of almost magical solution to their organisational and managerial problems.
However, these hopes run the risk of leading to disappointment because they are based on the idea that technology alone can revolutionise the way work is organised. However, as the work of Eric Trist and the sociotechnical school has shown since the 1950s, the face of work does not depend on :
- technology alone
- nor on individual and collective behaviour alone
- but both.
To return to the 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, most organisations have been extremely cautious. In May 2020, decontamination was not synonymous with a massive return to companies in many countries. A large proportion of employees have been teleworking 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 in culture and attitude cannot be achieved overnight. Building an organisation that decentralises decision-making and gives pride of place to delegation and autonomy requires support and training, both for managers and employees. Without this fundamental overhaul, teleworking is not being put in place... it's remote control!
Companies faced with 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 hand, those who encouraged 'empowerment', i.e. freeing up energies on the ground to find and test solutions.
You can't ask a local manager to trust the members of his team if the top management doesn't do the same.
Leaders who set an example are always a source of inspiration and provide a real impetus for change. 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 destabilising.
Companies need to give themselves time to learn the new codes. It's an illusion to think that teleworking can continue because it worked during the confinement period and saved the business of many companies. Once again, a majority of employees have discovered this type of interaction in an unprecedented situation.
To acculturate teams to these new ways of working, 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 barrier to transformation is risk aversion. Disseminating a culture of risk within teams is perhaps a way of developing a more flexible organisation and freeing ourselves from a rigid bureaucratic framework.
Finally, managers and employees need to be involved in internal or external networks that encourage co-development.
A different experience of teleworking for each employee
For many of the employees interviewed, teleworking is still only a recent experience, or even a desirable prospect.
It represents a promise of autonomy, which is obviously tempting. They all hope that by teleworking they will be able to :
- improve their quality of life
- better reconcile 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,
- finding more room for manoeuvre, etc.
None of this is wrong, but it will only happen if, at the same time, managerial, cultural and human factors make this change possible.
So, to take just one example, in a company characterised by a highly hierarchical and bureaucratic management style, the fears aroused by the remoteness of employees are very likely to result, on the contrary, in an increase in
- control,
- processes
- reporting
- remote meetings, etc.
On the other hand, in a company where autonomy and delegation of authority are already the order of the day, the adoption of teleworking will be much more natural.
Similarly, for employees unprepared for autonomy, the sudden disappearance of time and space frameworks can cause anxiety and disengagement. For employees who have long been used to taking the initiative, the introduction of a dose of remote working will lead to greater fulfilment.
To put it another way, the success of teleworking depends not so much on technological factors - the tools have been mature for a long time - as on human and cultural factors.
The risks of teleworking
The erosion of corporate culture
One of the risks of teleworking is that of the erosion of corporate culture as a result of the widespread use of remote working.
A corporate culture is never entirely prescribed. It's also a living thing, built up over the course of an infinite number of days:
- 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 their own family, the famous "zoom aperitifs" often turned out to be disappointing, artificial and dry compared with real human contact.
It's a well-worn image, but it's still true: the coffee machine is still one of the best tools for knowledge management, and a mini agora that is essential to the smooth running of a company.
The announcement by the PSA Group in France at the beginning of May 2020 that teleworking 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 break-up of the organisation in the future. The company remains, fundamentally, a community of men and women brought together by a common project. But what will be left of this human adventure if colleagues are no more than pixels on a screen? We can see that :
- in too large a dose, teleworking runs the risk of transforming the company into a simple, unstable aggregate of service-provider employees positioning themselves in their market with a mercenary spirit ;
- if it is well managed, teleworking enhances a company's flexibility and agility;
- If it's not used in the right proportions, it can lead to fragmentation or 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 generalise teleworking for this reason. They have found that this form of organisation substantially reduces the ability of their teams to work, innovate and create together. Coming from some of the best-known names in the digital economy, these precedents should, to say the least, encourage caution!
The negation of human relations
Towards the end of 2020, the popularity of teleworking declined significantly. Since the beginning of November 2020, only 45% of private-sector employees in France have teleworked, and only 23% have done so on a full-time basis1. There are a number of explanations for this lack of interest in a form of work organisation that has been heralded as the real revolution in the world of work2.
The first of these explanations is obviously the lack of any real reflection on the new forms of work requiring a rethink of managerial practices, as highlighted above. It's hardly surprising in these circumstances 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 teleworking situation itself: indeed, there is nothing more unequal than teleworking, because the family or personal environments are very different from one employee to another.
But there's another explanation: the absence of a real human relationship when teleworking. No-one can be fooled into thinking that the proliferation of videoconferencing, combined with so-called "social moments" such as virtual cafés or aperitifs, is likely to recreate the strong moments of exchange that we have all experienced around a coffee machine or in other places and at other times in the workplace.
The impoverishment of human relationships
Worse still, the successive confinements have exacerbated the sense of isolation felt by many teleworkers, particularly young people, because of the impossibility of having normal social relations outside work following the measures taken to combat the spread of the virus (travel permits, closure of cafés and restaurants, etc.).
As a result, we are not surprised by the sharp rise in psychological distress during the successive confinements, particularly among employees, with 41% of them and 58% of their managers declaring that they were suffering largely as a result of teleworking3.
What these signs show is that the impoverishment of human relations in the teleworking situation is not bearable for most of us in the medium and long term. The point here, of course, is not to reject telework out of hand, since it is undeniably a source of progress for people and the planet, but rather to suggest that HR departments take account of the fact that telework is a source of progress for people and the planet.Rather, it is to suggest that HR departments take into account the issue of the psychological safety of employees when they sign telework agreements, which have been springing up in many companies over the last few months.
It is 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 organisations
However, these risks associated with telework should not dissuade organisations from considering its implementation as a real step forward which goes well beyond its compulsory generalisation for health reasons, which we witnessed worldwide last year.
This will only happen if certain guidelines are followed in the deployment of telework within the organisation:
- Start by focusing on the why of teleworking.
- Prepare for a gradual roll-out of telework.
- Make the culture compatible with teleworking 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 in relation to their personal and professional contexts.
- Use teleworking as an opportunity to strengthen the organisation's agility.
- Prioritise human relations over technology.
- Accept a possible return to face-to-face work for the most vulnerable.
The need for a virtuous form of telework
In conclusion, these are just a few of the many ideas we can come up with to implement a 'virtuous' form of telework, which needs to be tailored to each 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 must not be fooled by all the marvellous teleworking technologies: we must never forget that technology is only a necessary condition, but never a sufficient one! You can't change an organisation by decree, as sociologist François Dupuy points out in his latest book5.
It's up to the people in charge of the organisation to turn the bright hope of change into reality by preventing telework fromWhat neuropsychiatrist Boris Cyrulnik calls "wear and tear on the soul" 6.
Source :
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Richer, M.: Déconfiner le travail à distance, Terranova Report, 19 November 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, No. 1484, 8 to 14 June 2020, p.22.
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Journal TV de France 2 du 19 novembre à 8 h : 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
Guest article. The expert contributors are authors independent of the Appvizer editorial team. Their comments and positions are their own.
Article translated from French