Is remote working the ideal answer, not only to health constraints, but to a better work–life balance and to cost control? Beyond the fantasies of companies and of the people concerned, the question of autonomy at work is key.
During these weeks of lockdown, many employees discovered remote working – a tool and a set of practices that freelancers and dispersed teams had mastered, or at least used, every day.
On the company side, some – after the fashion for open-plan offices that took off in the 2000s, with their supposed conviviality – welcome this new opportunity to cut office costs, while presenting it as a boost to “quality of working life”. But others are struggling to get their teams back to the workplace – because of fears linked to the health situation, but also for other reasons, more or less perceived and/or acknowledged.
Remote working: an enchanted interlude?
The feeling of an “enchanted interlude”, particularly for those lucky enough to spend these weeks in favourable surroundings (a house with a garden, a flat with a terrace, a suitable family set-up…), is no doubt due to several factors, more or less openly admitted.
Some went through a period of temporary unemployment, partial or total, but with the certainty (company survival permitting…) of getting their job back afterwards, and with most or all of their pay maintained, thanks to public support schemes and the commitment of some companies.
Others (some of whom also belong to the previous category) continued working remotely (here again, full-time or part-time).
Among them – and our survey on how people experienced 50 days of lockdown shows this – some drowned themselves in work. Deliberately, so as not to think about the situation. Or under constraint, because of their activity and the context, or the need to reconcile family expectations with professional demands.
Others, finally, discovered the pleasures of a more balanced life, between working time and family activities. And many of them are campaigning for this way of working remotely to become permanent. Did they manage to master their diary, their tools and their working practices, and to reallocate the time spent commuting to their family life? Or was their working time actually reduced? The haste with which some companies want to bring their teams back to the office suggests that the second hypothesis cannot be brushed aside.
Individual and collective autonomy
Beyond the tools, remote working rests essentially on autonomy: that of employees, at every level. And on the ability of managers, here again at every level, to find (and prove?) their added value in an organisation that values everyone’s autonomy.
Like it or not, not all employees have the same capacity for autonomy. This may be due to their job, but also to their own professional qualities. Some take hold of a subject, a task or a set of tasks, and see it through. Others need constant supervision, or extremely detailed tasks whose quality and sequence must be ensured through managerial action. This diversity is a reality to be taken seriously, so as neither to demotivate some nor to abandon others.
Autonomy is also the ability to take control of one’s life. It is not just working “enough”. It is also knowing how to protect oneself, in a chosen balance of life. Because in any activity, and particularly in times of crisis, the workload can become overwhelming. At the office, when there is no one left around you late in the evening, warning signs make you aware of an imbalance – when the company’s systems don’t switch off the lights and the servers… At home, the temptation is strong not to resist, not to raise the alarm, not to call for help.
Finally, autonomy is above all individual. But it can also be collective, made up of non-hierarchical interactions. A few decades ago, these were called “autonomous work teams”. Today, “agile” organisations (provided they also have other qualities). It is no more natural, and has to be organised and facilitated.
Individual and collective autonomy can indeed be developed. Less through “training” than through a new organisation of work and interactions, a new distribution of roles based both on the expected outputs and on individual skills at a given time. And on particular managerial skills.
Managing autonomy
With “autonomous” employees and teams, the question of management obviously arises.
First of all because some see their role only as exercising close “control”, based on criteria such as time spent at the office. Faced with the “enforced” remote working of recent weeks, some adopted practices already observed – with dismay or mockery – in multi-site teams. There is talk, for example, of a law firm – a profession that in principle brings together autonomous experts – that required its remote-working staff to stay permanently connected to Skype… Let us bet that the only aim was to make exchanges flow more smoothly, in real time!
Other “supervisors” want to centralise information and embody “the exercise of power” on their own. But remote working also gives everyone the possibility to contact anyone freely and directly, without even walking down the corridor or popping their head round the open-plan office – thereby attracting the benevolent attention of the manager who cares about their troops…
The remote-working manager is not cast in the mould of the authoritarian, vertical “leader”. On the contrary, they must be able to identify each team member’s difficulties and to bring a dispersed group to life. Because collective autonomy does not necessarily mean the absence of management. A team’s strength lies in its complementarities and synergies. It also lies in its real encounters, in the solidarity forged during real moments, formal and informal, in a shared setting (in French).
The remote-working manager is also someone who knows how to organise everyone’s work, so as to foster engagement and recognition. And the meaning each person gives to their work.
So they are more of a “facilitator”, a “servant” leader, who helps and also protects their teams from the pressure, even the contradictory injunctions, that exist in most complex organisations. Who also resolves potential tensions and conflicts between team members – but at a distance. And who favours trust over control… Because if total control is never possible face to face (and is even counter-productive), what about at a distance?
So many talents, then, different from those often observed. Talents to be developed, through training perhaps, but above all by putting new collective dynamics into practice, built on each person’s specific qualities and commitment.
Organising autonomy, too
This focus on remote working, and the period of extreme strain on economic balances that lies ahead, are also opportunities for companies to question the added value of their missions, and what they expect from their staff. A question raised with talent by Julien Damon in his article on “bullshit jobs” (in French).
Because while the day-to-day facilitation of contributions is the essential role of management, organising them is also the responsibility of the company itself, through a process of (re)defining the contributions of each of its entities and professions. In-depth work that involves all stakeholders in rediscovering – far from the mechanistic approaches of lean management and its excesses – the richness of collective intelligence and collective action.
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