In the context of the Covid-19 epidemic, telecommuting is no longer mandatory since the beginning of February : 24% of employees However, continue to telework at least one day per week in February 2022.

While a very small minority of employees had resorted to teleworking before the health crisis, teleworking concerned nearly one employee out of four during the first containment, one out of five during the second and until June 2021. Telework had two aims: to slow down the spread of the epidemic by reducing mobility and contacts, on the one hand, and to preserve the activity of companies and administrations, on the other.

Several studies published in early 2022, discussed below in this brief, draw lessons from this large-scale experiment in remote work:

• Insee draws up a report on the use of telework for the year 2021 and draws up a typology of teleworkers;
• The Dares (Direction de l'animation de la recherche, des études et des statistiques) of the Ministry of Labor and Employment is committed to describing the concrete consequences of the health crisis on the working conditions and psychosocial risks of the active population;
• APEC (Association pour l'emploi des cadres) and ANACT (Agence nationale pour l'amélioration des conditions de travail) for their part, have undertaken to identify the impact of telework on managerial practices.

Based on a roundtable discussion with several experts in the Senate, the Senate's Forward Planning Delegation has identified eight questions about the future of telework. The delegation's answers are accompanied by a series of recommendations (to be found later in this dossier).

In 2021, 22% of employees teleworked weekly on average

The share of employees who have teleworked decreases sharply from June 2021 onwards, only to rebound again in December.

In 2021, on average each week, 55% of managers teleworked, while only 22% of intermediate occupations and 17% of skilled employees did so. "Telework was almost non-existent throughout the year among low-skilled employees or blue-collar workers, reflecting the fact that the vast majority of them work in occupations where telework is not practiced. This reflects the fact that the vast majority of them work in occupations where telework is not practiced. 60% of teleworkers are managers, compared to only 22% of all employees who worked at least one hour during the week.

In addition, full-week telework is more common among managers: in 2021, 47% of managers teleworked, compared to 40% of other employees who teleworked. "Among managers, however, supervising employees reduces telework: 49% of managers whose primary task is supervision teleworked on average each week of 2021, compared to 58% of others."

Telework is less frequent than average for young people (17% in 2021 for those under 30), part-time employees (12%) or those in temporary employment (3% in temporary work and 13% in fixed-term contracts).

Some of these characteristics are related: managers are more numerous in large companies and among the oldest employees.

Four categories of teleworkers, according to INSEE

• 47% of employees work in an occupation for which telework was almost non-existent during the year 2021, even during the peak of the health crisis. The vast majority of these employees are blue-collar and white-collar workers (86%), and more generally employees in the health and social services, retail and hospitality sectors.
• 26% of employees work in an occupation with a median use of telework in 2021. These occupations are more frequently than average occupied by women, intermediate occupations or qualified employees, or civil servants: reception, secretarial and accounting employees, administrative employees in the public service, etc.
•  18% of employees work in an occupation where telecommuting was common in 2021, affecting more than one in two employees on average over the year (52%) but reaching 62% at its peak in April. Employees in this group are frequently managers in supervisory roles, IT engineers, financial executives and journalists.
• 6% work in an occupation for which telework has been intensified in 2021. These occupations are exclusively managerial, and less frequently managerial positions: IT engineers, financial managers, journalists, teacher-researchers in higher education for example. More than three quarters (77%) of employees in this group teleworked on average each week in 2021 and 59% of the days worked in these occupations were teleworked.

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Impacts on health and work: contrasting experiences of work depending on the individual

The Tracov survey included a sample of 50,000 individuals employed during the health crisis, aged 20-62 in 2020, with 19,953 respondents, for a response rate of 40%.

According to this survey, seven out of ten teleworkers were teleworking regularly at the beginning of 2021: from one to five days a week.

The Dares distinguishes three groups of teleworkers.

• The "exclusive" 25% of the teleworkers were doing it mostly five days out of five and were following their meetings by videoconference. This group feels that they have sufficient means on a daily basis to work remotely. This is the only group where a high proportion of employees had previous experience of teleworking.
• The " intensive The "intensive teleworkers": 30% of the teleworkers were teleworking on a regular basis, between one and four days per week in January 2021. During 2020, this group experienced long periods of exclusive telecommuting or hybrid telecommuting, alternating between on-site and remote work. They may have had previous telecommuting experience and were often provided with telecommuting materials (computer equipment, etc.) by their employer.
• The " vulnerable The "vulnerable": 17% of teleworkers also teleworked mostly between one and four days a week in January 2021: this group is distinguished from the previous ones by important difficulties in their work (connection problems, digital applications, hardware). "Since the beginning of the health crisis, they have only had a hybrid practice of telecommuting and for short durations. Having very little experience of teleworking before the crisis, they are discovering new digital tools and seeing an increase in their computer usage time." Almost half of them work in public administration, especially as managers and middle managers. Their group is the most feminized.

While telecommuting increases autonomy, it also leads to shifting hours and longer working hours. "Teleworking is associated with more pain and sleep disorders. The experience of teleworking varies from person to person. For teleworkers who have little or no equipment for remote work, social support deteriorates, as do other psychosocial risks and health problems. For women and civil servants, telework causes more difficulties than for private sector employees.

On average, women teleworkers experienced a greater deterioration in work intensity than their male counterparts, whether they were teleworking regularly or not. Compared to before the crisis, more women are experiencing increased work pressure, having to think about too many things at once, or receiving conflicting orders.

Female teleworkers report more deterioration in emotional demands than male teleworkers: they feel more increased tension at work and are more often upset in their work.

Even within homogeneous groups in terms of telework practice, working conditions evolve differently for public servants and private employees.

Compared to the private sector, telework in the public sector is accompanied by a greater deterioration in working conditions along several dimensions: value conflicts, difficulties in reconciling private and professional life, emotional demands, duration and intensity of work.

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Eight out of ten teleworkers want to continue to telework, but with less intensity

The preferred frequency is one or two days per week. 13% could continue but do not want to, and 7% do not want to telework because they feel their job is not compatible with telework.

Overall, the more intensive the telework, the more employees want to continue teleworking, but with less intensity. The majority of those who telework all week want to continue to telework at least three days a week, while those who telework mostly between one and four days prefer to telework one or two days a week.

Nearly half of employees who telework occasionally want to continue to telework on a regular basis (48%), while only one-third of those who only teleworked in 2020 are considering it.

The latter were more affected by telecommuting during the health crisis, either by having telecommuted without wanting to do so in the future, or even though their jobs were not compatible with telecommuting.

The conclusions of the Tracov survey are in line with those of the Telework and Hybrid Organizations Barometer of the Malakoff Humanis social protection group that almost half of the employees declare they want to work in hybrid mode. The proportion of employees who choose to work from home has increased from 59% to 68% in one year.

According to 27% of companies surveyed by Dares in February 2022, the majority of employees aspire to telework more.

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"Telework does not yet seem to have acquired the status of a fully-fledged work modality in the eyes of companies".

In September 2021, less than 4 out of 10 companies allowed their employees to telework (38%), of which 25% on a regular basis. This possibility varies according to the sector of activity: much more frequent in high value-added services (64%), where the proportion of executives is the highest and therefore the most eligible for telework, such as IT activities, banking and insurance or consulting, than in industry (31%), trade (21%) or construction (20%). But it also varies according to the size of the company.

While the number of company agreements dedicated to telework increased by 67% between 2019 and 2020, telework is not a topic for mandatory annual negotiations.

Two thirds of TPEs and large companies say that they have rules or procedures in place for their employees' telework. This formalization of telework arrangements is also common in SMEs (54%), but is much less common in VSEs (36%).

While a majority of companies believe that telework has changed the way their teams operate (53%), in VSEs and SMEs, as well as in larger organizations, they are much less likely to see it transforming human resources management.

Just over 1/3 of companies consider that telework raises new challenges in terms of social relations (38%) and working time management (36%).

Even fewer see the rise of teleworking as a factor in skills development (29%) or recruitment (23%).

The Breton companies that have teleworked seem to have adapted quickly to the tools of remote work

For more than two thirds of the companies, the development of telework is limited by the nature of the company's activities, which cannot be carried out remotely.

Problems related to materials and equipment (15%) are not much in evidence. According to the survey, the psycho-sociological effects (demotivation, de-socialisation, dehumanisation, etc.) of distance and organisational problems would be the main obstacles to the implementation of telework rather than material problems.

Companies that have teleworked seem to have adapted quickly to remote working tools if they were not already using them before. 84% of them use shared workspaces, and 78% use videoconferencing tools.

The first limitation cited by companies in relation to telework is the motivation of remote employees and the psycho-social risks that this could imply. More than one company out of three that has teleworked during one of the confinements has implemented a charter on the right to disconnect for its employees.

More than a third of the companies that had to implement telework in the first or second containment felt that the perception of telework had changed "for the better" for both managers (36%) and employees (38%).

The Entreprises 2021 survey is supported by the Brittany Region. It has made it possible to question 11,400 Breton companies and to collect the answers of 1,529 of them. This survey was conducted among companies with 10 or more employees between March 15 and April 8, 2021.

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One third of jobs would be "teleworkable

According to the economist Gilbert Cette, auditioned by the delegation to the prospective of the Senate, "the economic literature is however rather consensual as for the fact that in France as in the other advanced countries, the proportion of teleworkable jobs would be of a third, if not more. This figure seems very conservative.

In a note of March 2021, the Sapiens Institute estimated that 27% of the working population in France is already eligible to telework: 6.9 million people could telework without any adaptation of their workstation. In addition, 2.5 million more workers could telework if their workstation, hours and tasks are adapted, bringing the potential for telework to 36% of the workforce. However, there would still be 17.5 million people in the workforce who could not telework, which is almost two-thirds of the French workforce.

These figures are very similar to those delivered in a study from the Concorde Foundation, which estimated that 60% of employees would be unable to telework

According to the European Data LabAccording to the European Data Lab, 37.8% of jobs in France could be teleworked, a figure slightly higher than the European average.

A study from the National Bureau of Economic Research estimated that 37% of jobs in the United States could be fully telecommuted. This study, based on international comparisons, estimated that the more developed a country was, the greater the share of teleworkable jobs.

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Senate: the future of telework in eight questions

The answer is clearly negative for the three rapporteurs of the delegation for prospective studies: Céline Boulay-Espéronnier, Cécile Cukierman, and Stéphane Sautarel: " a still significant part of the work cannot be carried out at a distance. At best, half of the active population could be concerned by telework in France. In addition, we will not telework all the time and will probably alternate face-to-face and remote work".

The senators recommend the establishment of a telework observatory to " analyze good practices, but also cases of failure " and "build step by step a reference system that would be useful to all".

The reporters do not believe that telework will lead to further relocation. " Telework does not necessarily change the situation, especially since the most teleworkable jobs are the most qualified ones, for which there is a worldwide shortage. The real risk is that of a relocation of teleworkers, who, "for tax reasons or simply for personal preference, could increase their mobility to the detriment of their presence in France". The senators nevertheless recommend to preserve the residential attractiveness of France "to make our country a land of welcome rather than of exile for teleworkers ".

The parliamentarians warn that while it brings new risks that must be managed, telework, when chosen and negotiated, widens the range of possibilities offered to employees. It could even become one of the criteria for assessing corporate social responsibility (CSR), "in order to encourage the search for the social well-being of teleworkers", they argue.

If it is still too early to proclaim the revenge of the countryside and the end of traffic jams, a relocation movement can start and prosper in the years to come, especially for the benefit of a winning rurality, predicts the report. To prepare for this change, its authors consider it useful to anticipate the arrival of new teleworkers in the territories through various investments: third places, installation of fiber, maintenance of local public services, leisure infrastructures and places of sociability, help in building adapted housing. In large urban areas, it would be appropriate to encourage the conversion of office space into housing or to make it more modular. At the same time, it is essential to anticipate new ways of getting around, by reorganizing the public transport offer and accelerating the transition from vehicle ownership to shared use, the information report advocates.

According to the reporters, it would be appropriate "to encourage the reuse and sharing of digital objects now to avoid over-equipping companies and households.