Companies only think of telecommuting as a patch. Now it’s coming back strong for inflation

The expansion of teleworking was one of the great novelties that the pandemic brought to the workplace. This type of employment allowed many companies to continue operating during confinements and perimeter closures with greater security, and according to various studies it worked in terms of productivity and employee satisfaction.

However, with the improvement of the epidemiological situation, the companies that used it to maintain their activity thought twice and backed down in many cases, as we explained in Xataka. Now that problems are shaking us again, in this case the portfolio, both the Government and the companies are thinking again of teleworking as a solution to the emergency after wanting to marginalize it.

The government takes it back. The most significant case of changes in the direction of teleworking is that of the General State Administration (AGE). During the harshest phases of the pandemic, between March 2020 and September 2021, state officials were able to telecommute up to four days a week. In October last year, however, the government decreed that they had to return to the office at least four days a week.

In principle, this was going to be a temporary measure, until the teleworking decree for public employees was approved, through which they could benefit from up to three days of remote work, which should be in operation by the beginning of 2022 and that has been successively delayed and has not yet been enacted.

In January, union sources explained to Xataka that the delay in the approval of the decree, which at that time had already been postponed twice (currently there are four), was due to the fact that the Government was not giving priority to its processing . However, when things started to get ugly with the inflation of electricity and fuel, it was the Executive itself that rushed to include in its plan for energy savings and efficiency of the General State Administration (AGE) telecommuting three or four days a week, depending on the case, to reduce expenses.

That is to say, they did not approve a decree that they had already been well advanced for seven months when the epidemiological situation improved, but they rushed to put the AGE’s telework into a savings plan made quickly and running.

The companies. With private companies, the evolution was similar, many embraced teleworking in the first year and a half of the pandemic to begin to retreat from the fall of 2021. In many cases, these companies have barely allowed their employees to work remotely one day at a time. the week, as we already explained in Xataka; in others, it has returned to the office entirely. Although there are also exceptions such as that of Liberty Seguros, which has been in business for more than a year, full remote.

However, now many are thinking again about working remotely in private, especially after the summer, to save costs and take advantage of the incentives that the European Commission will ask EU member countries to offer their national companies to save energy.

Why? This double standard is only understood by the distrust that teleworking continues to generate in many companies and in the AGE itself. When the need is tight and the numbers start to get out of whack, maintaining activity before, or reducing expenses now, makes those who distrust this type of work ignore their doubts about their productivity and compromise.

Now it remains to be seen if, when inflation subsides and the economic situation stabilizes, companies once again discard teleworking and demand a return to the office or if, on the contrary, this second world crisis in just two years serves to definitively consolidate the model and that companies offer it widely to anyone who wants to and can carry out their work remotely.

Image | Jackie Chiu