Three years ago right now, something that we visualized as impossible- “how are they going to close us Spaniards at home with what we like on the street and in bars?”- happened suddenly: confinement arrived. Everyone except people in essential professions we locked ourselves at home with very strict conditions to be able to go out.
The goal: stop an unknown virus that was spreading and was already killing people without us knowing how it could spread so quickly.
Three years have passed since the beginning of the confinement which, although for many people it was very hard, for many it brought with it problems of anxiety, loneliness, stress from not knowing what was going to happen, from being away from loved ones, it also brought opportunities to discover a new world. For example, companies were able to prove something that they were neglecting: teleworking is possible for many professions.
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Lessons from teleworking brought by the pandemic
This great world experiment that came compulsorily, gave rise to many sociological studies and economic studies on a large scale to understand what it was like for workers to carry out their tasks remotely, compared to doing it in an office. At Genbeta we have made very relevant studies.
For example, if you telework in Spain you have 10 days per year extra free time compared to who goes to the office; or that it can improve the productivity of the employee but managers are very suspicious about it, if they do not see the workers in front of their computers.
There are also studies that have told us that it can increase the feeling of loneliness or that it leads people to be compulsively connected. And we know that teleworking endangers people with high salaries, since for companies it is now easier to find cheap and qualified labor in the world.
In Spain companies want us in offices
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However, different studies in this regard show us that, although the majority of Spaniards would like to continue working remotely (not all, many prefer their office routine), companies have sent people to the office.
Just two days ago we learned that the rate of teleworking in Spain has been gradually reduced in 2022 and it has stood at 12.5% compared to 13.6% the previous yearaccording to the report Flash teleworking data 2022 of the National Observatory of Technology and Society (ONTSI).
At the same time, the figures show us that Spaniards, whenever possible, they do like the idea of being able to work remotely.
A study by the INE or National Institute of Statistics, carried out at the end of 2021 (when the trend to get out of confinement and start a more normal life began), concluded that among the people who teleworked in 2020 and 2021 because their work allowed them to do so completely , 67.8% did it every day and, among these, 61.9% wanted to continue teleworking once the pandemic was over.
And the numbers are much lower. As the ONTSI study released this week says, “regular teleworking, that is, the one that is carried out on more than half of the days in which one works, has decreased in the last year from 7.9% in the last quarter of 2021 to the current 6.4%.
Occasional teleworking, that is, the one that is carried out less than half of the days in which one works, has grown unlike usual to reach 6.1%. Therefore the hybrid model has grown slightly. And, in fact, there are studies at a global level that suggest that the hybrid model is preferred by employees. Even so, the number of hybrid models in Spain is very low, according to this latest report made in our country.
Developers and tech have succeeded
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What we have seen is that, while the dream of teleworking has been frustrated in many professions, the technology sector and developers have partly succeeded in doing so.
At least a year ago now, we saw that Joppy, a Spanish platform that connects companies with developers, published a report on the labor market in the technological ecosystem. One of the most important data of the study was how the pandemic has facilitated the culture of remote work.
“While in 2019 only 2% of positions were offered in this modality (remotely) being the preferred option for 39% of professionals, COVID has forced companies to make their physical presence more flexible, which has caused in 2021 the remote job offer has grown to 48% of the positions offered“. At Genbeta we echo remote jobs for professionals in the tech sector and weekly programming.
On the other hand, in August 2022, a report prepared by the National Observatory of Technology and Society (ONTSI) of Spain showed that, in Spain, there are sectors that are betting on teleworking much more than ever before in the history. Although there are indications that the remote work modality cannot grow much more (and in fact it has fallen since 2020), this report concluded that the ICT sector has opted for teleworking.
But you don’t have to trust yourself. We have already seen how global technology giants are betting on offices. Amazon, despite the deep discontent of its employees, is an example and a few days ago Mark Zuckerberg was lethal with teleworking: he stated that Those who started in Meta in the offices were more efficient than those who had done it from home (That yes, without mentioning what other aspects could have influenced this more than the location of the worker, as we analyzed in an article).
In Genbeta | I was a digital nomad when nobody else was: teleworking was a lot of fun, stressful (because of technology) and nobody understood what I was doing
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