Teleworking and its organizational challenges

This sixth session of the seminar organised by GRETS, "Sociology of dissasters", will be attended by Laurent Taskin - Université catholique de Louvain. The session will be introduced by Jérôme Cihuelo - EDF R&D - GRETS.

Telecommuting emerged in the 1970s and has since spread like a silent wave through companies. Supported by numerous studies measuring its positive effects on productivity, work-life balance and job satisfaction and well-being, telecommuting has been the subject of numerous regulations aimed at defining its frequency. At the dawn of the 2000s, the challenge associated with telecommuting was above all that of transforming “control management” into “trust management”.

Telecommuting was first introduced into organizations, initially at the initiative of employers who saw it as a way of reducing office space and real estate costs while investing in a positively perceived flexibility, then at the growing demand of employees looking for working conditions that promote well-being at work and personal comfort. Organizational and managerial issues such as the dilution of work collectives and hyper-connectivity were just beginning to be investigated when the Covid-19 pandemic gripped the world in 2020, imposing telecommuting wherever possible.

Since then, the practice has become more commonplace, and telecommuting as a flexible practice implemented by the employer has given way to telecommuting as a lever for well-being and sustainability, encouraged by employees and certain associative circles. In short, telecommuting has become societalized, an issue that is reshuffling the deck and rendering pre-existing studies on the subject largely obsolete, while at the same time raising fundamental new questions such as isolation, the break-up of collectives and the disappearance of work communities, and the dehumanization of corporate management. In a context where the relationship with work is being reconfigured, notably by giving greater importance to quality of life (including at work), telecommuting today seems to constitute a way of life, making its organizational regulation a delicate matter.

• Laurent Taskin is a university professor at the Université catholique de Louvain, where he heads the Management Humain & Société Chair and the Master GRH program, and an affiliated professor at Paris Dauphine PSL.

Taskin, L. (2025) Le télétravail, un mode de vie. Presses de Sciences Po.
Taskin, L., Terlinden, L., Coster, S., Ajzen, M. (2024) The cost of managerial caring: Exploring managers identity work in the (post-)covid context. New Technology, Work and Employment.
Hénon, P., Taskin, L., Creusier, J.  (2024) La distribution des espaces de travail : Quels enjeux pour la GRH ? Revue de Gestion des Ressources Humaines, 131(1), 3-16.
Hénon, P., Taskin, L., Creusier, J.  (2024) La distribution des espaces de travail : Quels enjeux pour la GRH ? Revue de Gestion des Ressources Humaines, 131(1), 3-16.
Taskin, L., Klinksiek, I., Ajzen, M. (2023) Re-humanizing management through co-presence: lessons from the experience of intensive telework during the second wave of Covid crisis. New Technology, Work and Employment, 38(4), 143-167.
Klinksiek, I., Jammaers, E., Taskin, L. (2023) Disability in the New Ways of Working: a dis/ablement model. Human Resource Management Review, 33(2), 100954.
Taskin, L., Courpasson, D., Donis, C. (2023) Objectal Resistance: the Political role of objects in workers’ resistance to spatial change. Human Relations, 76(5), 715-745.
Laurent, M., Taskin, L., Ughetto, P. (2022) Une rupture dans le rapport au travail ? La pandémie de Covid-19 et les temporalités de gestion de leur parcours par les salariés. Revue internationale de psychosociologie et de gestion des comportements organisationnels, xviii(72), 63-83..