“The problem of disconnection is not new, but telework has amplified it, by abolishing the boundaries between working time and rest time. » As Fabienne Tatot, national secretary of the General Union of Engineers, Executives and Technicians (Ugict)-CGT, expresses it, the new habits generated by remote work do not always go well with the balance between personal life and life. work, especially during holidays.
Indeed, 36% of French employees connect remotely to work on vacation, according to a study published by the Glassdoor business evaluation site, conducted on July 14 with a representative sample of a thousand of them aged over 18 years old and working full time.
In a non-negligible part of the cases, this overload outside working hours comes from direct pressure from the employer. One in five respondents telework, because the latter sends them requests during holidays, and 24% of those questioned say they are ordered to take their laptop on vacation.
“Social pressure”
More surprisingly, this habit often originates in the worker himself. Thus, 35% of respondents use their professional tools “for fear of missing information”, and recognize that working from home encourages them to work harder, to prove themselves. In addition, 20% even report that teleworking increases the level of requirements of employers and customers so much that they consider it normal that ongoing projects continue to be managed during off-duty hours. A lawyer specializing in labor law, Elise Fabing sees this as indirect pressure from the company: “There is a culture of showing that you work twice as hard when you’re at home, that you’re loyal… Employees feel empowered and have long-term goals. »
A right to disconnect has been included in the Labor Code since 2017, but its terms are not specified by law
An observation shared by Fabienne Tatot: “Companies do not sufficiently regulate working time. They tend to pass it on to employees so that they have a duty to disconnect rather than a right. But as we are no longer evaluated by working time but by the work done and the objectives, social pressure is exerted on each of us, and it is therefore very hard to disconnect. » In fact, 54% of managers say they work on their days off, according to the Ugict-CGT/Secafi barometer published in November 2021. This figure rises to 73% in the public service.
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