The Conversation: Has teleworking become the scapegoat for companies in difficulty?

Has telecommuting been a parenthesis? Enchanting for employees, but hellish for companies? This difference in perception could well lead to a major divorce. Before revisiting teleworking policies, managers should think twice. At the risk of adding social crisis to economic difficulties.

On September 16, 2024,Andy Jassy, Amazon's CEO, announced an end to the company's hybrid work policy, requiring office attendance on all days worked. This shocking announcement surprised many observers, but it illustrates thecomplicated relationship between companies and telecommuting.

Five years after Covid-19, telecommuting - most often in hybrid mode - remains controversial. Although it is on theincrease in French companies, it is still the subject of debate.Tesla, Google, Apple,Renault,Zoom,Ubisoft and Publicis have recently called it into question, encouraging their employees to return to the office. Many arguments are put forward: lack of social cohesion, loss of creativity and productivity...

However, the results of studies on the subject are not so severe. Some studies show that telecommuting boostsproductivity, savesemployees time and energy, and even encouragesinnovation. Are companies barking up the wrong tree when they put telecommuting on trial?

The employee as an adjustment variable

Behind the arguments in favor of a return to the office, it would seem that the real motivations are sometimes less avowed. This is notably theposition of Ubisoft's unions, who see the questioning of telecommuting as a disguised way of pushing employees to resign.

Temporary solution vs. new autonomy

Executives andmanagers have always had their reservations about telecommuting, whereas employees are in favor of it. Of course, not everyone teleworks. Between a quarter and a third of French employees are involved (figures vary according to studies), themajority of whomare managers.

That said, satisfaction among teleworkers is high: 88% of them would like totelework as much or more, and among the main reasons put forward, 62% of employees believe that teleworking enables a better balance betweenspheres of life. While employees see it as a new-found autonomy, employers see teleworking as a temporary solution to cope with the pandemic.

After several years of experimenting with teleworking and empowering employees, we are now witnessing a return to employee control. Is this a step backwards? There is, in fact, a conservative managerial mindset that resonates with many employers and managers.

A return to control?

After a trend towards flexibility, the current shift in some companies looks like a return to the "second spirit of capitalism", based on hierarchy and control. This trend can be observed, surprisingly enough, in sectors that were once considered inclined to experiment with managerial innovations, such as the high-tech sector.

Conversely, sectors considered less conducive to this form of work and less attractive to candidates(such as metallurgy) are offering more teleworking. In a competitive job market, these companies use teleworking as anemployer-brand lever to attract talent.

More explicitly, this is the aim ofElon Musk's battle against telecommuting in the US government. By announcing the end of telecommuting, he hopes to reduce the number of civil servants without having to lay them off.

It's no longer a question of encouraging face-to-face working for reasons of cohesion, collective emulation or productivity, but of reducing the workforce at the lowest possible cost. Keeping one's job then becomes the main reason for going to the office. We've seen better in terms of motivation.

Face-to-face meetings do not guarantee success

As for the risk of losing creativity, team spirit and productivity, online communities (communities of practice, discussion groups, open source software,digital nomads, etc.) have long shown that distance is no obstacle to collaboration. What do these communities have in common? A shared desire to create together. In fact, face-to-face meetings are no guarantee of creativity or productivity.

The problem for companies is probably not whether or not employees are present in the same place, but rather their ability to offer a stimulating management style, tasks and projects.

A management problem

When you don't find meaning in your job, when you're faced withbrown-out(a depressive state resulting from a lack of meaning at work), withbore-out(boredom at work), or when you're in what anthropologist David Graeber called a "bullshit job", whether or not you're in an office makes no difference. Companies that impose face-to-face working to cope with their economic difficulties make telecommuting a scapegoat. Chances are it won't solve their problems.

Worse still, the risk for companies that prefer to return to the office is to add a social crisis totheir economic problems. The case of Ubisoft, for example, shows that the back-to-work injunction can have deleterious effects. Management could have done without the strikes and bad press that followed the announcement that telecommuting would no longer be an option.

A great divorce

The same appliesto Amazon, whose image with potential candidates, and also with consumers, is likely to be further damaged. In some companies, we are witnessing a "great divorce" between, on the one hand, employees seeking autonomy, meaning and work-life balance and, on the other, executives and managers wishing to regain control over people's bodies and time. Authoritarian, paternalistic management was thought to be obsolete. We're discovering that it's still very much in vogue.

Anthony Hussenot is a specialist in the evolution of work and organizations. His writings focus on alternative ways of working, new organizational dynamics and the role and status of work in society. He is a university professor at the Université Côte d'Azur, and a researcher at the GREDEG laboratory (UniversitéCôte d'Azur,CNRS, INRAE). He is co-director of the Alter-organizing research team.

Claire Estagnasié is a doctoral candidate in communications at the Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM), and in management sciences at the Université Côte d'Azur (UCA). She is affiliated with LabCMO (Laboratoire sur la Communication et le Numérique), CIRST (Centre Interuniversitaire de Recherche sur la Science et la Technologie), ReCoR (Groupe de recherche sur la communication organisante) and GREDEG (Groupe de recherche en droit, économie et gestion)-UniversitéCôte d'Azur,CNRS, INRAE-. Her research interests lie at the intersection of these two disciplines, in organization theory, and revolve around new work practices and organizational communication. More specifically, her thesis focuses on the sensitive dimension of remote work in the context of telecommuting everywhere.

This article is republished fromThe Conversation under Creative Commons license. Read theoriginal article.

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