The health crisis has had a major impact on the organisation of work in all French companies. The "hybrid" work model, integrating flexibility through telework, is a model that is accelerating since 2020.

Company premises have since been sold, abandoned, or redesigned in favour of a model that combines remote working with days on site or in third places.

Telework has therefore developed over the last few years, and has been imposed in certain companies bound by the national protocol for Covid-19 companies.

For the most part, telework has been adopted and is becoming THE virtuous and sustainable model for enhancing the efficiency of the company and its teams.

Organisations benefit in several ways:

• Less stress for their employees, who spend less time travelling to work.
• More efficiency among employees and in company projects.
• A development of skills observed among employees who were able to focus on side projects.
• Less stress for managers, thanks to the savings and lower costs of their rental space.

Telework is on a roll!

This was stated by BFM TV in December 2021, claiming that 38% of jobs in France are eligible for teleworking.

Since the beginning of 2022, the Government has announced a compulsory generalization of telework up to 3 days per week in companies.

As if telework was fundamentally linked to the "pandemic". This is a pity, because this way of working, provided it is well managed, has real advantages on the organisation of a company's work, and above all on the efficiency of its teams, and therefore its productivity!

The ABBYY.com study reveals this staggering figure: 1/3 of French teleworkers are considering changing jobs because of their company's processes.

As you can see, teleworking has become an indispensable criterion for attracting new talent.

To help you set up this hybrid organisation and manage it on a day-to-day basis, we provide you with information on the rules and obligations you should not miss.

What are the rules and obligations for telework?

To begin with, there is no universal rule when referring to telework. However, new agreements and principles are emerging, notably in the framework of the ANI.

A national interprofessional agreement (ANI) is an agreement negotiated and signed by the various social partners at national level and which applies to all sectors of activity on the national territory.

L'ANI notably concerns the working conditions and social guarantees of employees. The agreement of 11 January 2013, for example, required all companies to offer their employees collective supplementary health cover from 1 January 2016.

1. Telework: a company agreement

Telework is a philosophy of business life!

Some have already integrated it into their work organisation model for years.

Others are starting to come to it.

And still others remain resistant.

When telework is generalised within a company, this is referred to as a company agreement. The agreement can also be defined at the team level and is called a team agreement. These are the rules issued by all the employees in a team. They provide a framework for telework.

In concrete terms, the questions that companies are asking themselves are :

• What quota should be set up between distance and face-to-face learning?
• Which days of the week are teleworked: imposed by the company or chosen by the employees?
• Is there a compensatory allowance for teleworking days, covering the costs of operating at home?
• Is it allowed to work remotely from a residence other than one's own?

....etc.

Recently, the law on the lump-sum allowance came into force to cover employees' expenses when they are teleworking. The company can then claim a tax exemption for the compensated lump sum, subject to ceilings that must not be exceeded.

The BeeMyFlex application allows companies to create and manage their agreements at any level (global, per team and per employee). The telework flexibility policy is then automatically applied.

It is also possible to define a lump sum for the monthly telework allowance to be paid to employees.

2. Telework and its remote control

Good management of telework also requires good support for companies, managers and their employees.

What does good telework management mean in practice?

• Have the right tools to communicate remotely and not lose the link between the teams
• Have the right tools to monitor the presence of employees on or off site, to make team interactions more efficient.
• Have the right tools to give visibility to all teams, to know if a member is on site, teleworking, travelling or absent
• Have the right tools to manage your teams.
• Provide managers and leaders with concrete indicators to detect PSR.

This last point has become an essential issue for companies, particularly since the health crisis. It is important to identify weak signals in employees, whatever their level of fragility, to avoid stress and burn out, which inevitably lead to absenteeism, illness and abandonment...

Remote working amplifies these risks, which require regular monitoring by HR managers and actors.

3. Telework: what impact for companies?

Finally, telework - and its generalisation - is a real opportunity to transform workspaces in companies. This model allows them to optimise site occupancy.

Increasingly, and in order to remain competitive, companies are deciding to replace assigned seating with free seating according to the availability of space. Pencils, post-its and personal photos are disappearing to make way for more user-friendly meeting spaces; this is the flex office.

This raises a new issue:

How can you better manage your flexoffice model and how can you give employees the visibility they need to ensure that they will find an available space in the office? And most importantly, how do you make the flexoffice experience a success?

The organisation of work is one of the priority ambitions of companies since 2020; for managers, leaders and employees alike.

This is how we developed our BeeMyFlex application: to allow all the collaborators of a company to have the visibility and the necessary tools for a well-functioning and well-oiled work organisation. We will detail this in a second article soon!

So, do you have the right tools to manage your remote teams and your hybrid model?

Do not hesitate to test our solution and contact our teams for a demo!

BeeMyFlex #whereveryouare