According to a new study, 16.7 percent of French employees were teleworking at least once a week in 2012. There has been a sharp increase since 2011, when only 12.7 percent were teleworking.
This comes only a month after Marissa Mayer, Yahoo’s CEO, has asked her employees to stop telecommuting. However, as we shall see here, this might not be such a smart move.
This figure represent 4.2 million people, or a bit more than in the United States ( source : TeleworkResearchNetwork.com ). Out of these, 79.2 percent worked at home, 14.8 percent worked from a café or a lounge, 7.9 from a coworking space or a telecentre and 2.5 percent from a business centre.
48 percent of them are wage-earners from the private sector, only 17 percent are from the public one and the remaining 35 percent are independents, freelances and so on.
While these figures are encouraging, there is a huge hurdle as two thirds of this teleworking occurs in a non formalized way.
There still are many perceived hindrances to this practice, namingly :
- Doubts over the efficiency of the workers ;
- Perceived incompatibility with the workers’ activity ;
- incompatibility with the company’s culture ;
- IT problems.
Forty years after Jack Nilles coined both terms of “telecommuting” and “telework”, most people practicing telework see positive effects on their efficiency and concentration, a decreased fatigue and stress and a better balance between their work and private lives.
This might explain why 73 percent of people who aren’t teleworking yet are willing to do so. However, 53 percent are facing rebuttals from their hierarchy. This clearly shows that educating people on this practice is critical to its development. To learn out more on this, please refer to a previous Cleantechies article : The Importance of Telecommuting in Reducing Carbon Emissions
If you are willing to learn out more on this study, please check out the infographic in pdf as well as the Teleworking White Book. Unfortunately, both are in French.
photo: mccun934.