Danny Crouch working with his dog in the basement of his home in Arlington, Virginia on May 25, 2023 (AFP/ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS)
The metro-work-sleep from Monday to Friday? “It’s not the life I want.” Like millions of workers in the United States, Claire has, since the Covid, taken a liking to teleworking and no longer intends to spend all her week in the office.
The pandemic has forced Americans to work from home, and employers are struggling to get them back into the office.
And for good reason. Short vacations, sometimes non-existent maternity leave …: “These practices to which workers were accustomed in the United States have been disrupted since the pandemic”, explained to AFP Nela Richardson, chief economist of ADP, a service provider of company personnel management.
US offices are on average half empty compared to February 2020, according to data from Kastle, which handles entry badges for 40,000 businesses nationwide.
With strong disparities: the offices of Silicon Valley, in California, found only a third of their occupants, against half in New York or Washington, even two thirds in Houston and Austin, in Texas.
Amazon employees even demonstrated on May 31 in front of the group’s headquarters in Seattle to protest, among other things, against the recent obligation to return to the office three days a week.
“The world is changing and Amazon must embrace the new reality of working remotely and flexibly,” the organizers pleaded in a statement, also raising a question of equity, especially towards women and workers of color or with disabilities.
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said, on the contrary, in February that “working together and inventing is easier and more efficient (…) in person”.
Elon Musk, boss of Tesla and owner of Twitter, meanwhile outright banned teleworking, in the name of productivity and “morality”: according to him, employees would like “the worker (to go) to the factory , the chef at the restaurant to deliver food to them, but not them!”
– Half-empty offices –
An office building in Washington, May 24, 2023 (AFP / ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS)
A third of employees in the United States can work from where they want, against barely 18% in France, according to an ADP study published in mid-April and carried out last fall in 17 countries.
“An employer who imposes five days a week (at the office, editor’s note), that would simply not be an option for me”, told AFP Claire, a consultant who lives in Washington and does not wish to give her name. family for professional reasons.
This 30-something goes to the office irregularly, once every two weeks, sometimes more often. And don’t see yourself going back.
She has replaced the metro with a walk in the neighborhood, no longer wastes time dressing up every morning, sits outside with the computer at the slightest ray of sunshine, no longer runs in the evening to fill the fridge… And don’t regret the overly air-conditioned office either.
He certainly misses conversations with colleagues “a little”, but these “informal discussions clearly make them less productive”.
Isn’t she worried about missing an opportunity for professional promotion? “If I came to the office to show that I was in the office, and I got a promotion” which would then involve a full-time presence… “This is not the life I want!”
– “Challenge” –
Amy Whetzel works aboard her boat docked in Mayo, Maryland on May 25, 2023 (AFP/ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS)
Some leaders recognize advances related to teleworking. “Questions of lifestyle quality and efficiency have arisen,” said Gayle Smith, CEO of the NGO One, based in Washington and with several offices around the world.
“Raising children is a little easier if you don’t have to commute every morning,” she told AFP.
Some of its employees have even left the Washington area to “be closer to aging parents” or follow the transfer of a spouse.
She doesn’t see a drop in efficiency, but regrets the “positive” dynamic of in-person work. The equation is therefore, now, to find this emulation, while perpetuating these improvements in lifestyles.
For companies, “it’s a very difficult challenge, because it has changed people’s lives and the way they work,” says Gayle Smith.
Thus, teleworking is now “part of a set of benefits and options that companies can choose to offer workers”, abounds Nela Richardson.
On the employee side, “the question is whether they are ready to sacrifice career or salary progression to be completely remote”, she adds.
But, explains the economist, for employees, “it’s not necessarily + I want to work from home, surrounded by dirty dishes and unmade beds +”, but rather “I want to choose my working hours”.
© 2023 AFP
Did you like this article ? Share it with your friends with the buttons below.
