A year ago, to the day, France fell into the containment pot.

And for a large number of workers, these unprecedented measures of traffic restrictions to stem that of the Sars-CoV-2 virus were becoming synonymous with teleworking. 

And if the “hard” confinement will have lasted only about four months in France, the use of remote work has been established over time.

A sudden shift towards a new organization of work for around a quarter of French employees, according to INSEE, which did not happen without raising countless legal, technical and even social questions.

The teleworker, “superhero” of productivity?

From an economic point of view, on the other hand, teleworking would have been the “success story” of this year of social distancing and other barrier gestures.

At least if we are to believe a study published Monday, March 15 by the Sapiens Institute, a liberal think tank, and widely reported in the press.

The recourse to remote work would have avoided many bankruptcies of companies, thus making it possible "to save between 215 and 230 billion euros of GDP in 2020", estimate the authors of this work. 

But that's not all.

For the economists of the Sapiens Institute, the teleworker is also much more productive than his face-to-face colleague.

To be precise, it would be 22% more.

A figure that comes from another study on teleworking, published in 2016, but which would still be valid according to the Sapiens Institute.

For these economists, the gain in efficiency yesterday, as today, could be explained by “the reduction in the number of distractions and disturbances (coffee breaks, long lunch, noise) while increasing motivation through accountability”, details Dominique Calmels, co-founder of the Sapiens Institute, interviewed by Le Parisien.

He adds that the “sharp decrease in time-consuming meetings” also increases productivity. 

Not all working people can, of course, telework, recognizes the Sapiens Institute.

Farm workers, construction workers, as well as nursing staff in hospitals are, for example, condemned to perpetuate the habits and customs of face-to-face labor under the old regime.

In all, the study estimates that among working people, 6.9 million people can easily telecommute.

The economists of the Sapiens Institute have even drawn up a robot portrait of the candidate for remote work based on the statistical portraits of the professions published by the Department of Research, Studies and Statistics (DARES): he has a bac + 2 diploma, lives more in cities with more than 500,000 inhabitants, earns around 2,400 euros gross per month, works in companies with more than 50 employees and has to travel 45 minutes per day to reach his place of work. 

Overly optimistic conclusions?

But these conclusions do not satisfy everyone.

The main criticism leveled at the Sapiens Institute demonstration concerns the way in which the teleworker is portrayed as a productivity “superhero”.

The few studies devoted to this question are far from being quite as optimistic as that retained by the Sapiens Institute.

“The available assessments of the effects of teleworking on productivity lead to contrasting results”, note the economists of the Banque de France who analyzed the existing data in a blog post published in January 2021. 

Above all, the few studies that have looked into the issue since the start of the pandemic do not go in the direction of the Sapiens Institute.

A study carried out in Japan in April 2020 showed that the employees of a company admitted to being on average 40% less productive since working at home.

Another survey, conducted among 2,000 Seattle-area Americans between April and June 2020, indicates that more than 70% of those polled believe they are as productive or less than before being forced to telecommute.

To explain the drop in productivity, the two studies cite the difficulty of using IT tools for working remotely or unsuitable housing. 

Observations which seem to indicate that there is a difference between the economic impact of teleworking before the pandemic and after, contrary to what the study by the Sapiens Institute suggests.

It would be much more positive “when it is chosen by the employee within a well-defined and organized framework”, notes Pascal de Lima, economist at the financial consultancy firm Harwell Management and specialist in the digital economy at the Aivancity business school. , contacted by France 24. 

These studies also confirm that remote work benefits “much more to so-called 'creative' professions, such as communication or consulting, than those who have to carry out urgent tasks”, underlines this specialist.

But the productivity gains of companies are, moreover, not only the result of these employees doped with distancing.

A part “comes from the savings made thanks to the adaptation of the means of production, that is to say, that we spend less, for example, in printer paper, in renting of offices”, remarks the economist. French.

What the health crisis has also highlighted is that there is a dark side to teleworking.

The examples of layoffs by zoom, as at Uber for example, indicates that the bosses “can be tempted to take advantage of this period of distancing which does not facilitate the work of the unions to be more brutal”, estimates Pascal de Lima. 

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