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Telework and hybrid work grow strongly compared to face-to-face work

Despite the fact that more and more companies have decided that their employees should return to the office, the face-to-face work format no longer has the vast majority that it had at the height of the pandemic, when 15.3% of those who had a salaried work worked from home on a regular basis. However, according to The Information, there is still more than double the number of telecommuting than there was before the pandemic began. In addition, a rebound in this type of work cannot be ruled out from this fall due to the energy crisis. In this sense, the decision of the General State Administration to increase teleworking from two to three days a week to save energy stands out.

This increase in teleworking led to the approval of a law that regulated it in September 2020, establishing that it was voluntary and reversible for both employers and employees. From then until now, complete teleworking has been losing weight, at the same time as the occasional one has gained. What does this mean? That the number of companies that have made their workers return to work from the office most days of the week is increasing.

As much, in some they have managed to stay with three days of teleworking a weekbut the usual thing is that there are only two and even one. The latter would be exempt from being covered by the law that we have just mentioned, since it is only applicable if teleworking exceeds 30% of the week’s working hours. That is, a day and a half a week. One day a week is not enough. Otherwise, the company has to sign a particular agreement with each employee who teleworks, give them the necessary means to do so and compensate them for the expenses incurred by teleworking.

At the end of the second quarter of 2022, those who telecommuted half the days of the week were 5.4% of the total, and those who did so occasionally, 4.7%. In other words, 10.1% of those who work as salaried employees continue to fully telecommute, or have adopted the hybrid work model. Therefore, it has dropped significantly, although it is not expected to return to previous levels, when only 4.2% of the total worked remotely.

Large companies in Spain practically never offer widespread teleworking for more than two days a week. In them, attendance has even been completely recovered, adding some slight option of flexibility. But it is not usual, but something punctual. It is to be expected that telecommuting and hybrid working will depend on departments. The situation of an assembly line, in which continuous face-to-face work is necessary, is not the same as that of a technology or marketing department, whose members can carry out a good part of their work, or all of it, remotely. .

By autonomous communities, many differences can be seen. Thus, while in Madrid regular teleworking is practiced by 11.3% of wage earners, in Navarra they remain at 1.8%. In general, in addition to Madrid, only Catalonia, with 6%, exceeds the national average of employees who telecommute, set at 5.4%. As for occasional teleworking, Madrid reaches 8m5% of wage earners, and 5.7% in Catalonia. Galicia is close, with 5.6%. They are the three that exceed the average, which is 4.7%.

Meanwhile, an Infojobs report indicates that 21% of the active population teleworks, a figure that has also decreased compared to February 2021, when 31% of the active population in Spain did so. However, only 7% have a completely remote job, while 6% have a hybrid format of three or 4 days of work from their position and the rest remotely.

Among the advantages of teleworking that appear in the report are greater ease of conciliation (77%) and lower absenteeism (48%). Supporters of working in the presence format exclusively point to increased productivity in meetings (65%) and at work as such (56%) as its greatest advantages. Among the disadvantages of teleworking is a greater effort in cybersecurity (70%) and the difficulty of disconnecting from work (60%). As for face-to-face work, there is the ease of an accident at work (82%) and the additional cost for the company (42%).

Of the 66% of companies that have established teleworking, 60% will maintain it. Of them, 45% with a hybrid day, and 14% completely remote. 24% still do not know what they will do, but 17% will stop offering it. There is not much difference in this between the sector to which the company is dedicated.

However, this only seems to be the case among current company templates. Because in job offers to fill new positions in companies registered in employment portals, the offer of positions that include telecommuting among what they offer to those who opt for their offer of free positions has not stopped rising in the last five years . Thus, Infojobs has gone from 15,711 vacancies that were offered in 2018 to 556,088 vacancies that were not offered at the end of last year.

In 2022 the trend has not stopped, since in the first quarter of 2022 the offers with telework are more abundant than those of the sum of those registered in 2018 and 2019. And until last August, they continued to rise. Then they were already only 7% below those of all of 2021. The three sectors with the most teleworking offer are commercial and sales (285,394), IT and telecommunications (95,791) and customer service (35,947). The least, design and graphic arts (843), pharmacy (955) and professions, arts and crafts (1,058).

However, by sectors, in 2021 it was the IT sector that had the highest proportion of vacancies with telework, with 61% of the positions offered in Infojobs that contemplated it. Commercial and sales had 37%, and marketing and communication 33%. By regions, the ones that most concentrate the teleworking offer are Madrid, Barcelona, ​​Valencia, Malaga, Seville and Alicante.

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