Kiosk / Kiosk

No. 117

Le télétravail : enjeux et perspectives

The Reflection Group on the Future of European Civil Service (GRASPE) devotes its November edition to telework, which now concerns more than 20% of the European population of working age and has been accompanied by “an intensification of work, in that working time has increased due to hyper-connectivity and disruption to the work-life balance” (our translation throughout). “Lurking behind the obvious benefits, such as gaining commuting time and the environmental impact, its increased popularity also raises questions, particularly on worker disengagement, the rise in the absenteeism rate and also the managerial difficulties it brings with it”, the GRASPE paper stresses.

Fanny Lederlin (University of Paris I) points out that the German contemporary philosopher Byung-Chun Han has described the phenomenon he calls the “performance society”. She explains that “this idea is as follows: we were living in a society of discipline, this is modern society, in which we were all more or less little Kantian subjects responding to the categorical imperative ‘you must’; the ‘you must’ overseen by bosses, managers, etc. We have moved on from this discipline society to a performance society in which the categorical imperative is no longer ‘you must’, but ‘I can, therefore I must’. We are augmented by technology, smartphones, artificial intelligence: we have far greater capabilities, meaning that we are capable of far more than previously. In view of this, the philosopher argues that we got it into our heads that we need to be ever more efficient. When teleworking, we can spend the whole day without being interrupted, without being disturbed by colleagues or children when they are at school and we have started to work far more and, moreover –more studies are needed to unpick this – the productivity of telework seems fairly exceptional. As there are no more limits on our work, as we have extremely effective technological tools (our PCs), the danger is that we are getting ourselves mixed up with the artificial intelligence that assists us and that we are setting out to become ultra-efficient teleworkers incessantly exploiting themselves to go to the very extremes of their working power. This was already a danger in the office and it is worth noting that burn-out, which has just been categorised as a workplace illness by the ILO, according to reports by psychologists and psychiatrists of the world of work, is connected to the little internal boss we all have within ourselves; in general, there is no bullying behind burn-out, it is connected to these personal demands we put on ourselves to work more and more. I believe that telework does indeed increase the risk of this phenomenon”.

Loïc Lerouge, director of research at the CNRS, stresses that the psycho-social risks could be made even worse by the practice of working from home. “In some cases, rest time is not clearly defined, the workload is a major concern: how to balance the workload to prevent working life from taking over personal and family life? Snowballing working hours can be enabled by telework. Telework also calls the limits and boundaries of the workspace into question. There is no real definition of workspace, he observes. He goes on to report that the European social partners held a conference to launch a joint programme of work for 2022-2024, with a view to an agreement on a European directive regulating telework. “The aim is to harmonise the practice of telework at European level, based on the European framework agreement on telework of 16 July 2002 whilst preserving the principle of it being voluntary. Employers’ responsibility for health and safety at work in the framework of telework must also be clearly defined, along with the question of disconnection and who pays for connection equipment used in the framework of telework ”.

“As regards the possibility of a European directive on telework, there are several possible scenarios”, Lerouge explains. “It could be helpful to include a specific daughter directive in the framework of the 1989 directive, which would also reform the 1990 directive on the use of visual display screens referred to previously. The aim would be to harmonise the minimum protection standards and telework in the member states of the European Union in terms of rights, obligations and protection. Another option would be to include telework in a broader directive dealing with matters connected to artificial intelligence, the digitalisation of work, telework and aspects of connection and disconnection. However, this would lead to a substantial text that could potentially be quite complex to interpret”, he warns. He goes on to that “rather than including the psycho-social risks in a directive on telework, it would be more appropriate to consider a specific framework directive dealing with the psycho-social risks in the general context of work, appended to the 1989 directive, for instance. This approach would help to avoid shifting the debate on the psycho-social risks into a debate on telework, thereby ensuring a text dedicated specifically to these risks as inherent to work in general, whether carried out on-site or remotely. Furthermore, social dialogue, particularly European level, offers interesting guidelines and contexts to discuss these matters. It is, however, to be regretted that there is a lack of effectiveness, although these exchanges are important sources to develop in-depth legislative texts”.

The appendix to the article includes the “21 principles” drawn up by the union U4U: 

1. “Telework is voluntary: this is an essential point of all agreements between social partners at European level and the member states. Anybody not wishing to work remotely cannot be forced to do so (other than in the event of a pandemic, for example) openly or insidiously, by means of buildings policy, for instance.
2. By the same token, telework is reversible. Workers may choose to go back face-to-face.
3. It must be implemented, within a defined framework, in the interests of the business, in such a way as to make it easier for staff to be effective in the completion of their duties.
4. There are no longer grounds to establish a distinction between occasional and structural telework, or to apply a minimum duration to it.
5. The reference continues to be a working week of 40 hours. Flexitime, therefore the possibility to register (and gain back) additional hours of service, must continue to be a possibility.
6. Telework is variable: more generally, telework can be chosen variably: one week and not another, mornings or afternoons.
7. Telework is flexible: teleworking needs are expressed within sectors/units and takes account of the reality of the jobs and the sites, projects under development, balances within teams, the number of people involved, deadlines or crisis situations, and always in full respect of business interests. This means that specific measures must be considered for certain jobs, for instance interpretation – taking account of the effects on way the job is practised (DG SCIC) – audit (i.e. DG SANTE), when five days’ teleworking are authorised post-mission to write up the report and meet procedural deadlines.
8. Telework is more than just working from home. Systematically working from home is at odds with the essential requirements for human development, or can be reflected in downgraded working conditions.
9. Telework should also be promoted away from home, or abroad, including in decentralised offices. An individual space could be provided at the office.
10. […] Care must also be taken to ensure that there is a specific place for working at home where proper working conditions are possible (ergonomics, lighting, furniture, etc.).
11. De facto, this raises the question of costs arising from working from home (transferring the burden to the worker) and maintaining it. The employer must take on its responsibilities in this regard.
12. At certain EC sites, timeslots could range from 7 AM to 7 PM, respecting the currently agreed “core time”. Night work must remain excluded, other than for jobs requiring it and compensated as such (article 56 of the statutes).
13. Guarantees in terms of the social services proposed, such as childcare, nurseries and staff canteens, must tendentially correspond to the flexibility of the implementation of telework.
14. In theory, telework abroad would be permitted on the basis of a maximum tranche of 15 working days (or three weeks) a year. Implementation of this measure is subject to business interests.
15. Provisions must be set in place to allow telework abroad for longer periods in the event of exceptional personal circumstances.
16. Telework leads to a more autonomous and flexible practice of work managed on the basis of objectives. This could lead to changes in the way staff are managed and, more broadly, to leadership models.
17. Its implementation must be preceded and accompanied by new staff training and frameworks, including training to avoid ‘digital overload’.
18. Particular attention must be paid to the boundaries between private life and professional life. Reconciling private life and work life also depends on the availability of services for staff responding to needs and promoting regular work schedules that respect well-being.
19. A new culture of relations at work within a continuum of hyper-connectivity must be studied and its effects seriously assessed in order to correct any negative impacts (atomisation of staff, overwork, isolation, etc.).
20. It must be assured that telework does not become a form of flight, leading to isolation, losing sight of the bigger picture of the work being carried out. Work defined by others becomes even more formal when the only contact is the screen. Only a collective dynamic can influence the way things evolve, an individual worker must be a stakeholder of this, rather than an opponent.
21. Although housing policy is the consequence of the implementation of telework rather than the inverse, at this stage let us point out a paradigm reflecting this vision: as telework is voluntary, reversible and variable, and as its implementation must be flexible and decided upon at a decentralised level, the choice of where the work is carried out must make it possible to combine places in accordance with the preferences and needs of the business: at home, in decentralised branches, in the central offices, which can be both individual, collective and collaborative, or temporary. There will also be the possibility for hybrid work within a single team: some people working from home, others on mission at other sites, another group in the central office. […] ».

 

We have chosen to publish (practically) all of these union principles as applied to the institutions because we feel that they largely reflect the pros and cons of telework in society as a whole. This 165-page dossier is a follow-up to an initial volume and the extremely rapid developments in the way work is organised and the consequences of this, which have been insufficiently taken into account in the public debate. (Olivier Jehin)

 

Reflection Group on the Future of European Public Service. Le travail sous le prisme des évolutions technologiques et organisationnelles du 21e siècle (available in French only). Paper 49. November 2024. 165 pages. This document is available from at https://aeur.eu/f/e93

Finance et sports

Edition 154 of the Revue d’économie financière focuses on the financing and financialisation of sport. It contains four parts: the links between finance and sport; the Olympic Games; the most financially important sport, football; finally, other disciplines such as ice hockey, cycling, golf and tennis.

In the first part, Vladimir Andreff (University Paris 1) shows how organisations and sporting bodies, in a situation of monopoly (or monopsony), but also certain market players (football stars, for instance) benefit from this situation to secure the maximum possible financing, by auctioning what they have to offer (or what they demand) on the market (Olympic Games committee, localisation of an American franchise, sale of televised rights, purchase of a superstar).

Matthieu Llorca (University of Bourgogne) looks at the exponential rise in crypto-assets in professional sport (NBA, formula 1, football). This practice was discovered in 2021 when Lionel Messi was transferred from FC Barcelona to PSG and the Argentinian footballer secured partial payment in “fan tokens”.

The financialisation of football over the last 30 years and the way football has been transformed into a “financial product” are analysed by Jérémie Bastien (University of Reims) and Jean-François Brocard (University of Limoges). But although the phenomenon has both developed and become accentuated, the phrase “football is big business” is nothing new. It was coined the first time in 1905 by the founder of the Football League (created in 1888), William McGregor, a Scottish draper and first chairman of Aston Villa football club. Then, taking us back through the invention of the football World Cup, historian Paul Dietschy (University of Franche-Comté) deconstructs the myth of a “golden age of football free from any financial contingent”.

Although a number of articles remind us that “the Olympic Games are rarely profitable”, Dimitris Mavridis (OECD) and Claudia Senik (Sorbonne University) urge that the “baby not be thrown out with the bathwater” in their examination of the effects on the happiness of populations. They show that during the London Olympic Games, between the opening and closing ceremonies of the competition (27 July to 12 August 2012), happiness increased significantly London. However, this effect is fleeting, as it was “cancelled out in the month of September”. This trend seems to have been confirmed by the recent Paris Olympics. (OJ)

Association Europe Finances Régulation. Finance et sports. Revue d’économie financière. No. 154. Q2 2024. ISBN: 978-2-3764-7096-0. 267 pages. €35,00