What do Amazon, Ubisoft, Publicis, Black Tiger and Wopilo have in common? Almost nothing, apart from telecommuting, which the Jeff Bezos-founded American e-commerce giant brought under fire when it announced in September that the group's 300,000 administrative employees would return to 100% face-to-face working from 2025. Enough to worry all French employees who, since the 2020 pandemic, have integrated telecommuting into their organizational mode. "Employees didn't really fight for it. Covid forced management on the subject, but it's a social gain," said Marc Rutschlé, the Solidaires Informatique union delegate at Ubisoft.
On October 15, 700 employees of France's number one video game manufacturer went on strike in Paris, Lyon, Montpellier and Annecy opposing the new requirement to return to the office at least three days a week. From a purely legal point of view, "There is no acquired right to telework. It is a collective organization that is not irreversible," said Anne Vincent, associate lawyer at Voltaire Avocats. But for the trade unionist, as for the teleworkers who demanded it in 2023, "Employees must have the choice."
The question of returning to the office had already arisen a year ago, when a vast movement to regulate telecommuting began when agreements signed during the pandemic were renewed. At the time, it was Publicis and Google who had restricted telecommuting. And even – what a paradox! – Zoom, the leader in videoconferencing, followed suit. The movement continues today. Those who had settled for a unilateral charter, such as Ubisoft, are taking advantage of the opportunity to open negotiations to engrave the new situation in an agreement.
No reaction from the financial markets
But why should we once again restrict this organizational mode, still favored by employees? The latest edition of the Global Survey of Working Arrangements, published in October, estimated that teleworking concerned between 30% and 40% of working people in France in 2023, precisely 33.5% according to Eurostat, and that some would be willing to exchange 5% of their salary for two or three days of telecommuting a week.
The impact on productivity is neither obvious nor uniform. While US studies, presented at the telecommuting conference held at Stanford University from October 9 to 11, estimated the loss of productivity at between 10% and 20% for employees who are 100 % telecommuting, they also demonstrated that returning to the office is not painless. "Too strict a return-to-office policy may lead to lower employee retention [in other words, departures] or require higher wages, too flexible a policy could harm productivity," the researchers said. For their study "Determinants and consequences of back-to-office policies," Sean Flynn (Cornell University), Andra Ghent and Vasudha Nair (University of Utah) analyzed over 900 publicly traded groups: The financial market has not reacted to announcements of the end of teleworking. "This may indicate that there is no consensus among investors on the subject," the academics said.
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