Sit at a garden table as a desk;
participate in videoconferences sitting at the foot of a tree;
make phone calls while strolling along the water's edge... These paintings, not far from being idyllic, have a name:
greendesking
, a kind of improved teleworking, where you leave your accommodation in town for soft of a lawn or the coolness of a forest.
Pleasant all year round, but all the more tempting at the start of summer, when we could see ourselves leaving a little earlier or staying a little longer, working from home, to make the pleasure last - Canadians call that the "traces".
35% of French people will do so this summer, according to a recent study by the Génie des places firm conducted with more than 3,000 people.
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A call for green air
Besides the pleasure of leaving the sound of car horns for that of cicadas,
greendesking
seems to guarantee increased concentration and efficiency.
Many scientific studies, conducted in recent years around the world, point to the impact of the lack of light, natural ventilation or contact with plants on stress, fatigue or lack of concentration.
In short, we live and work better in contact with nature.
This is what Harvard biologist Edward O. Wilson calls biophilia, to which he devoted a book in 2012, and which could be summarized as follows: our emotions are intimately linked to nature and depend on our contact with her.
Companies have understood this, and many are greening their
open spaces
with all their might are building vegetable gardens on the roof of their offices – to pick tomatoes between two meetings – or even, like AirBnb recently, allowing their employees to telecommute from anywhere, therefore potentially from the countryside.
Read alsoFrom Paris to Fontainebleau, they tell their new enchanted life in the countryside
Logically, rural telework offers are multiplying.
Jumbled up, let's mention Naboo, which offers team stays in 150 villas, My Teletravel, Remoters, a sort of AirBnB for teleworkers, to coworking spaces like 50, in the Yvelines, passing through atypical places like El Capitan, a large country house in the Orne, where you telecommute by practicing "coliving", with local residents.
The tourism giants are also adapting: just as hotels, at the height of the pandemic, offered “office rooms” for the day, Club Med, Pierre & Vacances or Gîtes de France are now exploiting this vein of "traces".
It is better to anticipate the questions that this raises: is it desirable for the collective, the efficiency and the quality of the work?
Christophe Nguyen, psychologist and president of Empreinte Humaine
Negotiate the key of the fields
It is still necessary to obtain the authorization of his employer to not only telecommute, but in addition, far from home.
This implies a fluidity and mutual trust from which we are perhaps still a long way off.
One in two employees believes that there is still a lot to do to properly implement teleworking, and one in three managers, that it prevents them from managing their teams well, according to the tenth barometer conducted by OpinionWay for the firm Empreinte human, published this July 7.
“What is certain is that it is good for employees to be able to organize themselves freely to work in larger environments, close to their place of weekend or vacation, explains the psychologist Christophe Nguyen, president of Human Footprint.
In short, to manage their time and their workplace like freelancers.
Hence a certain balancing act for aspiring
greendeskers
.
“Rather than asking your boss as a favor, it is better to anticipate the questions it raises: is it desirable for the collective, efficiency and quality of work?
Fair to colleagues?
Possible in the long term?
If the answers are no, the employer has no interest in saying yes, except to please his employee.
Which seems, despite everything, to become an argument in its own right: more than one in three French people who occupy a position without possible telework plans to resign within six months, according to a survey by the BCG firm published on July 7, and many employers in need of manpower multiply the promises of flexibility to attract new recruits.
To read alsoLætitia Vitaud: “Today, we even count the number of hours of sleep or sport that we need to “be efficient””
From “green office” to
new deal
?
In reality, the question goes far beyond the mere happiness of working in the countryside.
The key issue is time and the increasingly pronounced need to manage it freely.
“Active workers demand, in order to live better, the means to reconcile their professional and personal lives and to spend time with their loved ones, which does not prevent the “job” from being done, continues Christophe Nguyen.
But this transition does not happen overnight.
We need to rethink work, become aware that a rested employee, who feels heard, supported and spared by his management, will perhaps be more loyal and efficient.
This is an opportunity to discuss work, what we do, where and under what conditions.
Working in the countryside to be alone, concentrating on a complicated file,
In video, 7 good reasons not to stay at home from morning to evening while teleworking
Will employers be forced to take advantage of this new deal?
Perhaps, seen as the pandemic has pushed thousands of working people to distance themselves from the world of work and seek another way of life, less restrictive, less centered on work.
Demanding assets, which draw a new balance of power.
“The pandemic has reduced the stigma around flexibility.
Employees dare much more than before to take advantage of the benefits offered by their employer, to articulate their work around their life and not the other way around”, deciphers Vinika Rao, executive director of the Gender Initiative of Insead, who conducted a study on gender inequalities in the office after the pandemic, published in May.
Read alsoOlivier Duris, psychologist: “It is essential to hear that our life is neither work nor business”
Lower the borders
The confinements offered the opportunity to take a step back, to step aside or even, for some, to turn 180 degrees.
A new field of possibilities has opened up, which remains to be explored.
“HR policies seem to have been created in a totally different world, under a different social contract,” continues Vinika Rao.
Who decides that a desk job should be done in the office?
On the one hand, employees have taken a step back, adjusted their lives, tasted flexibility without giving up being productive.
On the other hand, employers understand that they must trust their teams, be interested in the result rather than the
process
to build the office of the future.”
The idea is not to be employed in Paris while living full time in Provence or in Portugal, to the detriment of creativity, collective intelligence and the essential feeling of belonging to a group.
But rather to have the choice, the possibility of juggling between the rhythms and the frameworks of work, to draw the best from each of them.
“Technology allows us to do this, and offers new levers for recruiting and managing employees,
a fortiori
on a global employment market, emphasizes Vinika Rao.
The talent war knows no borders.”
Since we recruit and apply at the end of the world, in the name of what should the limits of the office remain unshakeable?