Sophie de Menthon is president of the employers' movement Ethic and a columnist in various media.
What is not the astonishment of business leaders to discover, presented by employees, the new medical prescription for teleworking.
Admittedly, it is obvious that telework can be good in certain cases for the health of employees, but here is another obligation which is added to all the constraints which rain down on the management.
The Covid has been there, previously the occupational doctor and he alone, could, after consultation with the company manager, encourage telework extending the period of confinement during which it was forbidden to go to his place of work.
In exceptional times, exceptional measures, but when it comes to "protecting" employees from day-to-day work, we are more and more creative.
That business leaders preserve employees is quite commendable, but that the government gets involved in it becomes more questionable.
The Minister of Labor at the time, Élisabeth Borne, had already seen fit to “order” that this remote work opportunity be extended.
The bosses were therefore required to grant two days of teleworking after the pandemic, without any pretext of public health, thus introducing a new form of virus into management.
Yes, some employees are very efficient working from home and this can be an opportunity, although after the
Teleworking must remain a decision of the manager in agreement with the employee.
Sophie de Menthon
But above all, it is a disastrous tendency to let the State interfere more and more in the organization of work, to impose and encourage this kind of new “relation to work”.
Remember that if the French are opposed to 68%, according to an Ifop poll, to the reform of pensions with a minimum age, they are 73% to claim "I like my box", according to an opinion way poll, then we can wonder why such distortions?
Employees are confident in their company, while they are not in politics.
Not to mention that only 25% of the population can, in the context of their work, benefit from this physical absence.
This creates real discrimination between companies and between the different sectors of activity.
All the usual complications ensue: restaurant tickets, human and professional relationships, electricity and home installation bills, musculoskeletal disorders, children returning from class... We are unequal in the face of housing space.
Should we encourage the exodus of employees to the countryside in the garden in teleworking if the doctor has not yet prescribed it?
Remember that the “possibility” of teleworking is an option and not a right.
Moreover, the balance of power has changed, the freedom of the employee is increasing and it is not surprising to hear one of them declare, for example:
"I take a day off from home because I I have the plumber coming”
.
Employee comfort, of course, but how far?
Entrepreneurs do their utmost to satisfy those who work with them, especially since they are currently unable, in SMEs in particular, to increase them.
Companies have got used to it and some have changed their processes to introduce a part of remote work when it is efficient and does not disturb the efficiency of others.
Who will not ask for a prescription to be able to stay at home, because they are too tense at the office, public transport is too difficult or they have back pain?
Sophie de Menthon
So it is essential to speak officially on these new cases of prescriptions from general practitioners, who make prescriptions indicating that the patient must work at home, without recourse to the occupational doctor.
This is the door open to all excesses.
Who will not ask for a prescription to be able to stay at home, because he is too tense at the office, that the open-plan office depresses him, that public transport is too difficult or that he has back pain?
The pretext of the arduousness of public transport in the Paris region is a golden opportunity: the crowds, the irregularity of timetables, the saturated trains... We must remember and confirm that it is up to the boss and him alone to decide on the method to adopt to save its employees and its company.
If really there is a serious reason, it must be the responsibility of the occupational doctor, as during the Covid, and he must discuss it with the boss.
What to think of this current maintained vagueness and this new trend?
The Minister of Labor consulted on the subject is himself unaware of this new practice of doctors.
It is a matter of conscience that has a general collective impact.
If treating physicians are really authorized to prescribe telework, it must be said and explained.
It is a practice that is all the more attractive in that there is no actual work stoppage and that it costs nothing to social security or, in principle, to the company!
Laxity in this area is a threat.
