More and more companies are backtracking

At Amazon, teleworking is over! The tech giant is asking all employees in its administrative departments to return to the office full-time. A trend that we are also seeing in Europe: 4 years after Covid and the widespread adoption of teleworking, more and more companies are backtracking. In France, according to the latest OpinionWay study on the subject, 82% of employees have received encouragement or instructions from their employer to return to the office. And for some companies, these are even more than incentives!

Fears for productivity

Among employers in favor of a return to the office, 7 out of 10 have even imposed mandatory days of presence. Basically, many bosses have never adhered to teleworking and prefer to return to the pre-Covid model, analyzes Eléonore Quarré, head of social studies at OpinionWay.

“These employers have checked what teleworking could give and they have two major reasons that hold them back. Both a fear in terms of corporate culture. But the second and real reason is productivity, and this fear which was major from the beginning of teleworking, it has never really left business leaders.”

Executives very attached to teleworking

This return to the office is particularly observed in the retail, hotel and catering sectors. This is a little less the case in digital, banking or insurance, structures where there are also more executives. And for them, there is no question of going back, explains Pierre Lamblin, the director of studies at APEC, the Association for the Employment of Executives: “Today, we have one in two executives who telework at least two days a week, two out of three at least one day a week, and you have one in two who would like to increase the number of teleworks. In other words, for executives in the private sector, it is considered a given.”

Abandoning it would therefore be a very big risk for companies. One in two executives even threatens to resign if teleworking were to be eliminated.