Finding Top Talents

The impact of teleworking on employees in Europe – A study conducted by Phoenix Executive

“Agile… Smart… and Mobile working, or Telework and Working from Home (WFH)” – Many terms are used for the flexible working trend that has emerged since Covid-19 whose concept can be summarized concisely by the Martini advert from the 80s: “Anytime, anyplace, anywhere”.

This trend, which at the beginning of the pandemic restricted our liberty with the obligation to work from home, could turn out to become one of the biggest acts of liberation in the labour market within the last century. Although the rate of telework had been increasing prior to the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, nobody expected such a swift transition from a regular and bureaucratic system to a flexible work organisation mainly focused on results and performance rather than hours spent.

To find out how these changes are being perceived by employees, Phoenix Executive conducted a study and spoke with 200 employees directly in various European countries questioning their experience with telework. The people we spoke with varied from positions within Sales to Human Resources to Finance, IT, Legal and back-office and at different levels, from Vice President, Director, Manager to Personal Assistant. We were curious about the new concept’s general acceptance, the impact on people’s well-being, its effects on work attitudes and work-life balance, and whether this trend would be equally embraced in Northern and Southern European countries.

The interviews were conducted in June and July of this year. To get straight to the point: not only were most of the employees we spoke to enthralled by this new work format, but also companies seemed to gradually recognize the benefits of its implementation.

Agile working involves a trust-based culture. And it seems that trust between employers and employees or workers has grown over the last years. Not solely based on experience but also due to studies showing that telework generally raises employee efficiency. In addition, offering telework as a benefit can help employers find high-skilled labour based further away.

The advantages listed by the participants we interviewed were the following:  

• Commuting: a reduced commuting time leads to more actual working hours.
• Motivation: the general work organization turns out to be less stressful, which increases motivation. Meetings, including online meetings, are shorter, more focused, and therefore more efficient.
• Concentration: concentration at home is easier than in the office where small talk and colleagues walking in and out of the office can be disruptive. As work can be done without interruptions deadlines are easier to meet.
• Costs: petrol and wear and tear running costs are lower. Especially with the current steep increase of energy prices this advantage was considered as quite substantial, not to neglect the additional benefit of reducing environmental pollution.
• Flexibility: working hours can be adapted to personal rhythms leading to a positive impact on work-life balance.

On the downside, non-negligible disadvantages were brought up:

• Contacts: the social exchange at work decreases which impairs the company’s communication & culture. The integration and retention of new employees are more challenging.
• Discipline: some employees lack discipline which can affect the whole team.
• Coordination, organization: the coordination and organisation of projects are more difficult.
• Career: due to a decrease in contacts with superiors, promotions are considered to be awarded more randomly.
• Health: a clear separation of work and personal life is lacking making it more difficult for some people to disconnect and thereby inciting them to work longer hours.
• Divided society: not all employees have the option to work from home which can create a conflict between those who can and those who cannot.

While the general feedback from Northern and Southern Europeans regarding their perception of telework was similar it turned out that the exploitation of the new trend varied slightly according to the location. Whereas employees in The Netherlands, United Kingdom and Germany took obviously more advantage of these new opportunities, people in Italy and Spain spent more time in the office.  This does not seem to be a consequence of national regulations or companies’ policies but more linked to cultural aspects confirming the traditional idea of Southern Europeans favouring the outdoors and social life whereas Northern European being more homebodies. A few candidates in Spain and Italy admitted that the benefit of having air conditioning in the office was an important inducement to come in to work.

All in all, the newly gained flexibility seems to please employees in both Northern and Southern Europe.

The enthusiasm of some candidates even conveyed the impression that a kind of “second motivational wind” had arisen since the appearance of this new culture. They showed pride in their employers’ flexible work policy and the trust they put in their personnel.  A sharp increase in technological progress within companies following this trend was also positively noticed.

Some candidates now consider work-life balance and flexibility as the most important factors in assessing job offers, and all of them admitted that they would play a substantial role in their evaluation of a new opportunity.  

Meanwhile most of the companies are aware of the importance of keeping up with this new trend and some of them spare no effort in trying to make this format viable for the entire staff.  The implementation of the flexible work policy has often been delegated to Heads of departments allowing/facilitating individual solutions, notably for people holding more operational (office based) positions. To fight loneliness and reinforce team bonding, social events are being organized by companies or by departments.  Even weekly counselling sessions offered to people not adapting to this new policy were mentioned.

The general feedback from these candidates seems to confirm that job satisfaction and employee well-being have increased albeit paradoxically initiated by the lockdown in 2020.