Telework: 6 errors not to be reproduced in 2022

After the time of the emergency telework came that of his registration over time.Now is opening a third chapter: that of the near future of the office.Has teleworking signed his death stop?What is it going to use and how to think this new articulation between workplaces and work?

These reflections are at the heart of the latest work by Sarah Proust*, associate expert of the Jean-Jaurès Foundation and consultant.By collecting and analyzing data on office wage earners across Europe, it looks back on the errors made by companies during successive confinements in the implementation of telework and offers solutions to prevent them fromrepeat.

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1. The dilution of the work collective

"Work is first of all something collective in the sense of a collective production to which everyone makes their contribution," defines the author.The crisis brought a blow to this common sense because the distance has denied the links between the members of a team.

But to fight against the dilution of the collective is not "forcing people to be there one day a week, warns Sarah Proust.The collective must find a meaning through organization and work and answer a strategic questioning: what to do with this day spent together at the office?What do we create together?I tend to think that you can leave them with employees based on current projects and not impose fixed days of presence.»»

2. The bilateralization of the managerial relationship

During the first confinement, many managers directly called the employee who was at the end of the chain, the one who was most effective or the one with whom he was best to ask him to perform a task.Most often, for the sake of efficiency or ease."This functioning impoverishes the working relationship," deplores Sarah Proust.He verticalizes the processes, enclosing the manager in the role of the commander and the collaborator in that of performer.»»

To avoid these drifts, it is better, as much as possible, communicate working orders in a collective meeting, in the office, because “office life and the group produce social control with all the disadvantages we know, but also withThis advantage of not leaving a framework and an employee alone in an unbalanced, even degraded bilateral relationship.»»

3. Excessive control of the manager

Do you have these workspaces in mind in the 18th or 19th century or the foreman controlled the work of the top of his platform?"Our unconscious created the idea that when employees are not observed, they do not work," said Sarah Proust.

Hence the first reflex, when teleworking became widespread overnight, overcrowd its teams: a point every morning and a daily point in the evening, reports to be sent at the end of each day…."Employees felt infantilized," says the consultant.

This vertical and authoritarian managerial culture no longer corresponds to current organizations.To reform them, managers can activate two levers, according to Sarah Proust:

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4. The appearance of a feeling of loss of meaning at work

As during the great periods of crisis in history, the pandemic of Covid-19 has hatched a loss of bearings and an inability to apprehend the next day: “The pandemic is one of the greatest worldwide and collective upheavals since the secondWorld War, which induces in each anxiety and probably unpublished questions, including in our relationship to work and in particular on our usefulness at work, on the meaning of what we do at work.Some employees that telework has been imposed have felt unnecessary.Their isolation has sometimes led to a form of invisibilization of the employee and his task in the eyes of the employer, "analyzes Sarah Proust.

The teleworkers sometimes had the impression of being relegated to the background, especially when their chefs went to the office and not them.At the other end of the table, teleworking also carries in it a risk of hyperconnection to compensate for this physical distance.

“The office can make it possible to find a balance between these two excesses, on the sole condition that companies reinforce the symbolic significance of it, make it live.

5. The assimilation of teleworking to a duplicate of office life

"Teleworking is not work elsewhere," says Sarah Proust.It is a complementary mode of work organization, useful for combining business performance and employees' well-being.»»

As an organization of particular work, it cannot therefore be simply considered as a copy-paste of work in the office.HR and managers must initiate three projects to take into account the specifics of remote work:

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6. The lack of informal relations

Remote work has seen informal relationships limited to their congruent portion."The informal is based on spontaneity, the unexpected, difficult to reproduce remotely," notes Sarah Proust.What alternative 2.0 to passing a head in an office or crossing a colleague by chance in an elevator or in the coffee machine?"The screen freezes a lot.We can misinterpret an expression that we would easily decode in face -to -face, because we are social beings!»»

However, in the author's opinion, informal relationships are powerful tools for regulating the employment relationship.As proof, this example: "A Spanish employee told me that when her chief communicated her stress at the office, she got up, was going to have a coffee or chat with a colleague.What she didn't think of doing at home at all to evacuate the pressure.Some colleagues have buffer roles, to appease tensions, to create binders in a team or to comfort, roles more difficult to keep from a distance!»»

"The informal has other virtues," she continues.It allows you to learn, implicitly a profession, codes, a corporate culture by looking at others to do.It also allows you to ask, at the end of the meeting, in a low voice, this famous silly question which is never so and that we would not dare to ask Teams!»»

What solution to reconnect with informal relationships?"Make the office again attractive, bring this common place imbued with the culture of the business.All employees who are 100% teleworking tell me the same thing: they have taken no distance from their work but with their business, yes!»»

*Teleworking: The end of the office ?, From Sarah Proust, editions de l'Aube, 2021