design ORGANIZATIONAL AND ENVIRONMENT / group de research: Alberto Andreu Pinillos, Javier Arellano Gil y Laura Bello Urbina

Teleworking is already a reality in companies in Spain and in the world. The data show that telecommuting was a model that grew every year at a gradual pace, but the shock caused by the pandemic accelerated it. A reality that led the social partners and the Government to negotiate within the scope of social dialogue to regulate its implementation in organizations. 

Context

According to data of the Bank of Spain at least 80% of the surveyed companies in the country had to send most of their employees to work at home, however, due to the characteristics of the status improvident cannot be understood as telework per se.

The remote work is a model that, according to a research of Eurofound, was not developing equally in all countries of the European Union (see graph 1). In the case of Spain, only 15.40% of the workers surveyed were teleworking frequently until 2019 and by April 2020 this had already doubled1. A percentage that still does not reach the average of the continent, but that reflects the enormous potential that has its application in the companies of the country.

Graph 1: Percentage of employees teleworking in the EU before and during coronavirus

Own elaboration on data of Eurofound (last update April 2020).

The boom of remote work during the health crisis led the Bank of Spain to carry out an economic bulletin where it analyzed not only the incidence of companies implementing this modality, but the premise that the ease or difficulty with which it is carried out depends on the sectors of activity and the subject of work. From this, it was found that the majority of employees teleworking belong to the following sectors: communications (67.3%), real estate (64.2%), Education (61%) and financial and insurance activities (61%). While, hospitality (13.5%), construction (12.9%) and agriculture (8.2%) are some of the sectors with less home-based employees.

Added to which, according to the INE classification, jobs within any sector that are positions of technicians, professionals, scientists and intellectuals (58.9%) and directors and managers (56.2%) have the greatest potential for working outside the office.

Implementation of a new regulation

From data of the INE updated in July 2020, 32.2% of the companies in Spain that had to adapt to teleworking will continue under this model at least during the next six months. On the other hand, 55% of remote workers, during the State of Alarm, rated the experience as positive and said they wanted to keep it permanently2. 

So, in the midst of the exponential growth of home-based employees the Government published the Royal Decree-Law 28/2020, of September 22, of work a distancia, a specific law to regulate it and thus expand what is already included in article 13 of the Law of the Statute of Workers Spain (2015). After the Executive published the preliminary draft last June and after agreements with employers and unions, this Tuesday the committee of Ministers approved it. It will come into force twenty days after its publication.

It excludes that during the status unforeseen by the coronavirus and when it is necessary to keep workers at home, the application of the rule does not come into force. However, in this case, companies must provide means, equipment, tools and consumables to their employees. Compensation for the above is made by collective bargaining.

How is Spain compared to other countries?

The interest of companies to implement work in the best possible way is a global issue. For that reason, it is interesting to know what is being carried out in other countries to understand our own. Below is a table comparing the regulation of telework in Spain with the model of two countries of the European Union: Italy and the Netherlands3. The first was chosen because it is part of the close environment of the country and registers a lower growth of telework, reaching in 2019 8.9% of the total of its employees working remotely. Meanwhile, the Netherlands, contrary to Spain, has been even before the pandemic a benchmark of telework having accounted until the beginning of 2020 30% of its employees working in this modality.

View table of comparison between countries in PDF

The question that arises after this comparison is what more or less off-site workers depend on. From agreement with a research of the European Commission, the remote work is not equally efficient for all types of employment. For example, in the Netherlands approximately 60% of employees work in the professional activities sector and in technical, professional, scientific and intellectual positions, which makes teleworking easier for them. This is not the case in Spain or Italy where there is a high rate of employment in the sectors of commerce, hospitality, transport and industry that require greater presence.

Other important factors that influence, according to the same study, are: the digital development of the countries, the higher the digitalized population, the higher the issue of teleworkers; the percentage of self-employed, who have a greater tendency to work from home; and finally there is a correlation between the size of the companies and the potential to send their employees home.