Is teleworking on the way out? For business manager François Morinière, president of Entretiens de Valpré, teleworking has taken a step forward in the relationship of trust between employee and employer, and in the spirit of delegation.
The decision taken by Amazon to end teleworking from January 1, 2025 for the company’s 300,000 employees created a big surprise in the world of work. As in many areas, GAFAM [acronyme des géants de l’économie numérique : Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon et Microsoft, Ndlr] are observed because they are often trend precursors. This decision illustrates the movement observed in many companies to reverse the organization of work suddenly put in place in a few hours in March 2020, during the first wave of Covid. Let us remember the feat that was deployed all over the world to enable the survival of businesses in the health context of the time.
Since this period, teleworking has established itself in a lasting manner in the landscape of labor rules, particularly in Europe and the USA. As is often the case, it was among the Americans that the organizational measures were the most radical, with the start of a very partial return to the office in 2022. Employees enjoyed a new freedom in their personal organization, making it possible to better reconcile family obligations, the quality of work, and often leading to moves to more pleasant and, above all, significantly less expensive living areas. Living 100 km from New York, for example, allows you to halve the cost of housing.
The search for balance
Many have described this complete upheaval of the relationship with work, with a real reversal of the relationship between the company and the employee, the latter clearly more deciding on the conditions of exercise of his employment. It is not uncommon for teleworking conditions to now be included in the three elements of job choice, on par with salary conditions, all driven by a shortage of labor in many economic sectors for several years. .
In France, the conditions of teleworking are regulated either by the employment contract, by a company agreement, or by a duly established charter, avoiding the à la carte system which has quickly become an unmanageable headache for human resources directors. . A form of balance has been established to counteract the excesses of teleworking: impossibility of bringing colleagues together at the same time, difficulty in organizing office hours, gradual disappearance of group culture in the face of a fragmented and disembodied social body, difficulty in really evaluate the working time of employees, etc. The boss of a large French group spoke of his difficulty in distilling esprit de corps and the desire to belong in a foreign subsidiary where employees met only a few times a month… Another spoke of his embarrassment at now seeing his company split in two between white-collar workers and blue-collar workers, the latter having to continue to comply with very restrictive factory working hours.
Building a professional friendship
We will never completely go back in time and Amazon’s decision would be very difficult to apply from now on in France, particularly in large groups. It is therefore up to managers to now find the sources of motivation, confidence, and also be educational to encourage people to find areas of common life in offices, more intense, more invigorating, more inspiring. The company has become one of the last bastions of “living together” organized for a common project. It is the place of mutual enrichment, personal growth and fulfillment through work. Teleworking has taken the relationship of trust between employee and employer to a new level, and in the spirit of delegation. This new maturity must be the crucible of trust, and this needs more than ever to be nourished by real exchanges, in the flesh, eye to eye, to build a true professional friendship.
