The tele-working revolution

Mark Zuckerberg announced that Facebook was cancelling all events and meetings of over 50 people until June, 2021. A step to fight against Covid-19 that many other international companies have followed. It is also a way of making savings taking into consideration the economic crisis. The digital tools that we have within our reach have also facilitated this decision, because if we have learnt anything from the pandemic and the State of Alarm, it is that we can be anywhere in the world with just a click. Google Hangouts, Jitsi, Skype, Zoom, Microsoft Teams or GoToMeeting are some of the digital platforms that allow us to hold video calls with anyone, wherever they are. These platforms already existed, but their use multiplied during the pandemic. Zoom video Communications users, for example, rose from 10 to 300 million in just five months. 

The pandemic has speeded up the digitalisation of both companies and homes by three years and it has caused changes in work, consumption and in leisure. Changes that are here to stay. This is the case of tele-working, the growth of which is making experts ask whether we are in the middle of a revolution. Some of the large companies in developed economies have already said that what previously was a significant pilot project will turn into the normal way of organising the labour market. “But the idea that the end of the physical office has come is exaggerated. The International Labour Organisation estimates that 27% of workers in high income countries could tele-work from their homes. This does not mean that they will continue working from home,” sources from the UN indicate.

What is true is that companies will reduce the surface area of their offices by 30% due to the boom in tele-working, according to the real estate consultancy Laborde Marcet. Additionally, “the strategic location of offices and commercial premises has become the priority, taking over from surface area.” And this is also one of the consequences of the change in consumer habits, since, according to the same consultancy, “the boom in electronic trade has meant that retailers are trying to balance out their resources to maximise their sales, combining their presence on the main shopping streets with e-commerce.” 

In 2019, 8.3% of workers in Spain resorted to the option of working from home, either regularly or occasionally; a figure that is clearly below the European Union average (16.1%) However, a study by CaixaBank Research estimates that “32.6% of all the employees in Spain could potentially carry out their work remotely.”

Changes un the work 

To do this, an as yet, non-existent regulation is needed. In June, the Government announced that it is finalising a law to regulate tele-working and it wants companies to compensate the employees’ expenses. It also advocates setting maximum working times and minimum resting times. These are some of the demands made by experts such as José Mª Ramada, Labour Doctor, at the Parc de Salut Mar, a member and researcher of the Research Centre in Work Health (CiSAL in its Spanish initials) and a teacher at the Department of Experimental and Health Sciences at the Universidad Pompeu Fabra. In the first place, he warns that “tele-working must be conceptually voluntary, because workers are entitled to decide whether their homes meet the necessary requirements to work from home in suitable conditions.”

For the expert, “the situation has improved greatly and new tools have been made available to workers, but at the start of the pandemic, we were not prepared. At the peak of the crisis, “the labour regulation was not being applied; people were working at all hours and this is not tele-working. Tele-working involves organised, structured work, with suitable resources and established working hours that allow the personal and working life to be made compatible.”

Having said this, and “in view of the lack of a European directive that can be passed on to the Spanish legislation, companies and workers must agree on specific working times; about who provides the means of production and how the communication mechanisms are established with the company management”, Ramada adds. 

The workers, “must generate a new way of working; they have to respect the working times and reorganise a working space at home that allows a certain degree of isolation, with a suitable table and chair.”

“I think that tele-working is a fantastic way of being productive, of joining the workforce, if it is regulated,” the expert explains. “In the same way that risks are evaluated in companies, they must be evaluated in each worker’s house, such as the ergonomic risk of sitting for too long in chairs that are not suitable or an excess of exposure to computer screens. If we manage it, tele-working is a magnificent alternative that could resolve many problems, in a pandemic situation or not. For example, it could make the working and personal lives of many workers who have to take care of family members, more compatible,” the expert concludes. 

The reinvention of consumption, schooling and leisure

In the first weeks of the pandemic, consumption by families reached record figures, particularly online, when over one million households opted for it. Today, internet shopping is not easing off and the figures seem to be consolidating in a range of between 70-90% of weekly increases with respect to the same weeks in 2019. And the fact is that many of the purchasers gained during the healthcare crisis have come to stay, sources from Nielsen indicate.

Educational centres have also had to reinvent themselves during the pandemic and some of the changes will stay. The digitalisation of the classrooms has been speeded up, but a more flexible school model must be developed, which can respond agilely to any healthcare situation. But the digital gap must also be taken into consideration. From one day to the next, lessons stopped taking place in the classroom and moved over to the internet, leaving behind 9.2% of households with children, without any internet access, which represents around 100,000 households that cannot connect to the Internet.

The lockdown shot up the consumption of streaming platforms by up to 45.6 hours a week, according to a study by the companies Nielsen and Dynata. But eSports are the platforms that have seen a golden boom, with the leagues of online games such as League of Legends or Fortnight, which have helped young people between the ages of 15 to 30 years to survive the lockdown. And the fact is that the consumption of online videogames in Spain in April alone increased by over 75%.