On the cover of EL PAÍS on March 15, 2020, just four years ago, a photograph of the practically empty Gran Vía in Madrid.
Crowning the cover, the words “Alarm decree for the coronavirus crisis.”
And some news: “The virus changes the way of working.”
Teleworking arrived then, as a desperate resource to avoid a complete paralysis of economic activity.
Today, some experts predict that its days could be numbered in Spain.
A report from the KPMG consultancy gives just two years of decline, until 2026, before a complete recovery of the face-to-face work model, a return, is predicted by 78% of the CEOs of the main Spanish companies. to the fold after years of (relative) transhumance attributable to temporary reasons.
What was given is over.
What seemed to be a weapon full of the future seems to be running out of ammunition.
Workers, with resignation, reluctance or euphoria, depending on the case, are returning to the office, the place to which, in the opinion of a substantial part of their bosses, they should never have stopped going.
Grow to continue shrinking?
In the short term, despite everything, the omens that point to a more than likely eclipse of remote work contrast with reality: in the fourth quarter of 2023, according to figures provided by the human resources consulting firm Adecco in its Opportunities
and Monitoring job satisfaction
, the percentage of professionals who worked remotely has increased again in our country to reach 3.06 million people, an increase of 19.4% compared to the first quarter of 2022. We are still far from 3 .55 million that was reached in the second quarter of 2020, in full confinement, but the trend does not seem to point towards an imminent extinction of what the English have called the home
office
.
More information
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What is the reason for such a discrepancy between figures, perceptions and predictions?
A careful reading of the KPMG study suggests a possible explanation: teleworking persists and remains a popular option among a high percentage of employees, but companies only accept it as a necessary evil and have conspired to limit its incidence as much as possible. .
In fact, they are already doing it.
Thus, the consulted managers would be expressing a wish that they themselves are responsible for turning into reality.
2026 is the date on which they plan to have completed a restructuring of their companies that will turn teleworking into a marginal residue or a relic.
Queen Elizabeth II, working from home at Balmoral in 1972.Keystone (Getty Images)
In the Anglo-Saxon world the panorama is very similar.
A recent
Business Insider
article accumulates evidence that this counter-reform of the labor model is underway and progressing at cruising speeds.
52% of American companies are requiring their employees to go to the office a minimum of four days a week.
88% have proposed limiting the number of hours worked remotely in 2024.
In the opinion of economic journalist Madison Hoff, senior managers put forward arguments such as a supposed drop in labor productivity that consultancies such as Goldman Sachs, and researchers such as Emanuel, Atkin or Gibbs attribute to teleworking.
Hoff considers that the evidence is not conclusive (other analysts tend to think, based on different measurement criteria, that productivity is increasing), but companies have already reached definitive conclusions: “Productivity plummets as a consequence of the loss of direct control by employers and the response is to force employees to return to the office as soon as possible.”
Who wants to stay home
Olga M., a 46-year-old administrative officer, has found herself in that situation in recent months.
Her company hired her in 2022 with the commitment that she would go to the corporate headquarters, in the center of Barcelona, once a week and complete the rest of her days from home.
In October she was offered a new “hybrid” work model: three days in the office, two at home.
They presented it as “a simple suggestion”, but she, despite the fact that she lives in Granollers, more than 30 kilometers from Barcelona, and does not have her own vehicle, decided to accept: “Seeing what was happening with the majority of my colleagues, I assumed that the suggestion would sooner or later become an order, so I preferred to adapt and avoid problems.”
In December, the three days of in-person work became four, also with his acquiescence.
Today, he considers that going to the office “is a hassle,” but it has “obvious” advantages: “I am a very sociable person, and the long days of solitary work in my apartment in Granollers were turning me into a kind of hermit.
Now I am once again part of a human group that meets daily, both to work and to share small social routines.
I don't know if that boosts productivity or not, but it seems preferable to me.”
Pete Townshend of The Who working from home in 1969.Chris Morphet (Redferns)
Olga joins, with reservations, the side of those in favor of returning to the fold.
Carlos V., 37 years old, a municipal official in a city council that prefers not to be disclosed, is among the firm detractors.
In his opinion, “with the digitization drive that the pandemic brought about, the conditions were created for officials who are not facing the public to adopt a teleworking or hybrid work model that was much more satisfactory for us and, furthermore, as demonstrated internal reports, even more productive than in-person reports.”
However, in the end “the logic of political control” has prevailed.
The middle managers had been pushing for months for their subordinates to return to the city council because, in Carlos's opinion, “they have the soul of foremen and neither can nor know how to manage teams remotely, they assume that, if we are at home, without being subject to their regime of paranoid surveillance and continuous and absurd meetings, we are going to be lazing around [he uses a much more graphic expression, but asks us to tone it down], like they would do.”
Apocalyptic and integrated
For Carlos, “the extraordinary progress in carrying out entrenched tasks that was recorded during the pandemic has come to nothing as soon as the mediocre bosses, aided by four balls and by the workers' representatives, have imposed their will.”
He is protected by legal provisions such as Law 10/21 on remote work, which, among other things, guarantees “employment security” for those who work totally or partially at home and do not want to stop doing so.
But Carlos considers it “a lost war,” despite his status as a civil servant: “Public employment protects you against arbitrary dismissals, of course, but not against the silent attacks of middle bosses who, if they want to, can do you wrong.” impossible life.”
So he has chosen to compromise, although the in-person model of the administration, as currently organized, seems to him “a monumental waste of time.”
Anna M. belongs to that group of professionals who expect to continue teleworking beyond 2026 and, “hopefully,” until they retire.
The 31-year-old translator and project manager works for a
software
manuals company based in Germany and the United Kingdom.
“In the middle of the pandemic, they offered me a flexible contract type, something similar to the work and service contracts that exist in Spain, but with greater protection for the employee.
In the three years I have been with them, I have only traveled to London twice, and they were courtesy trips, to meet my supervisors in person and participate in group activities, what they call
team building
and in reality it amounts to leaving partying with your mates.”
Her remote relationship with the company that employs her has not been an obstacle for her, in 2023, to be promoted and even receive a productivity bonus and a share in corporate profits: “It is the first time that I have the feeling of being involved in a work relationship in which I am treated as an adult, fully trusting in my ability, my honesty and my judgment.
After all, we work by objectives and my performance and level of commitment are visible.
But in face-to-face work, according to my experience, factors such as docility, camaraderie, the tendency to allow oneself to be exploited, manipulated or even humiliated weigh in.”
Anna insists that her relationship with her “virtual” colleagues is “cordial and close.”
Some have even come to visit her during her vacation, but that, she jokes, is because she lives in Barcelona, “the city that excites everyone, except its residents.”
The era of hybrid models?
José María Peiró, professor of Social Psychology at the University of Valencia and director of the IDOCAL research institute, considers that the short-term death of teleworking is a “hasty” omen with hardly any foundation.
“The majority of those who are returning to the office in recent months are those who were only working remotely as a result of the pandemic and other temporary circumstances,” argues Peiró, “but both teleworking and hybrid models, that is , those that combine in-person and remote work, are consolidating and will continue to grow.”
For Peiró, “the new generations that are joining the labor market ask for flexibility within an order and rational criteria for organizing tasks.
The most competitive companies, those that are truly committed to attracting and retaining talent, are adapting to this demand.”
After the upheavals of the pandemic, the market is “in a boiling phase, looking for a hybrid model that is satisfactory for all involved.”
And companies capable of finding it are guaranteeing themselves “an important competitive advantage for the future.”
The figures are clear.
Before the arrival of the pandemic, the percentage of Spaniards who worked remotely was barely 5%.
During the confinements, a peak of around 35% was reached due, in the words of Peiró, to the fact that “necessity became a virtue”, but it was foreseeable that a high percentage of these unexpected teleworkers would end up returning to the face-to-face model as soon as the conditions health authorities would allow it.
Currently, around one in every seven employees (13.6%) in Spain works remotely, a figure somewhat lower, but similar, to what Peiró and his team manage for the Valencian Community.
Spain continues to be one of the large economies in which the incidence of teleworking is lower, far behind the 36.4% in France, 25.9% in Germany or 24.1% of the community average.
Peiró attributes these numbers to the fact that ours is a “less flexible economy and with a lower degree of digitalization.”
But precisely for this reason he considers it foreseeable that it will continue to become more flexible and digitalized in recent years and will align itself, even slightly, with the countries around us.
For Peiró, companies that are forcing an indiscriminate return to the office are, in general, “the least innovative, since they try to apply simple solutions to a complex reality, and that type of approach to complexity very rarely works.”
The academic assumes that in some market segments there may have been a decrease in productivity, caused "among many other factors that would require an analysis, due to poor application of teleworking."
As an antidote, he suggests “training the supervisors.”
That is, instruct middle managers in hybrid team management “within the framework of a model that focuses on results and abandons, once and for all, the simplistic and impoverishing logic that it is the eye of the master that “fattens the horse.”
Recent studies on the degree of employee satisfaction with teleworking (or the lack thereof) yield contradictory conclusions.
Some believe they have recognized an age bias.
While a Deloitte survey from 2023 indicated that 84% of those belonging to the Zeta generation would consider leaving their job if they were required to go to the office every day, another, carried out by Steelcase Iberia, states the opposite: they would be precisely Those born after 1994 are the most in favor of in-person work.
Peiró concludes that, to assess these disparate data, “the samples and the applied methodology would have to be analyzed.”
In his opinion, in order not to cloud the debate, we must resort to qualitative analyzes that take into account, for example, “the psychosocial risks that workers perceive both in the office and in teleworking and to what extent they affect them.”
If we cross these data with “the logic of each specific labor segment and the needs of each company, we can reach an adequate diagnosis on which specific model should be applied in each case.”
It's not simple.
But it is unavoidable.
Ultimately, as Peiró summarizes, “the recipe to be applied is by neighborhood, but the hybrid model is going to gain prevalence.
Finding their optimal fit is the great medium-term challenge for human resources departments.”
The future (buoyant or disastrous, it remains to be seen) of teleworking passes through this difficult process.
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