Telework has not permeated the companies of our country, since companies of all sizes plan to return to levels of remote and digital work similar to those they had before the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic, as reflected in the data from the IV Study on the state of digitization of Spanish companies and public administrations by Vodafone presented today by the telecommunications company.
The aforementioned report shows that large companies in Spain are the most reluctant to maintain the level of telework achieved during the pandemic, although it also highlights that these companies were the ones with the highest number of employees in this work modality before the declaration of the state of emergency.
A) Yes, 50% of the workers of large Spanish organizations had the possibility of developing their profession away from the offices in March 2020, although those responsible for the study emphasize that in most cases it was hybrid work and not a completely remote modality. That is, they could reconcile some telework days a week with others of face-to-face work.
That percentage has risen during the pandemic to 94% of workers in large companies, but vIt will forget to drop almost to pre-coronavirus levels, to 51%, once it returns to normal, according to the data in the report.
SMEs, more open to teleworking
In small and medium-sized companies the level of implementation of teleworking was much lower before March 2020, and it has also been during the pandemic, but these companies are more willing to progress towards its extension once it returns to normality.
The study distinguishes between micro-companies – between one and nine employees and independent professionals – and SMEs – between 10 and 99 employees. In the former, the percentage of workers who had the possibility of teleworking before the pandemic was 14%, a figure that has risen to 30% during the state of emergency and that it is expected to fall again to 18% with the return to normality.
As for SMEs, 29% of their workforce had the possibility of teleworking in March 2020, a number that rose to 72% during the pandemic and that expected to drop to 36% once this black chapter in the history of humanity is closed.
The public sector is committed to teleworking
Public administrations were, along with micro-enterprises, the organizations in which teleworking was worst implemented in Spain before the pandemic, as only 18% of their employees had this possibility. That number rose dramatically after the declaration of the state of emergency to 91% and, according to the study data, would remain at 55% when normality returns.
Daniel Jiménez, general director of Vodafone Business and in charge of presenting the study, stressed that these data have been collected through surveys of company managers and public administrations, not workers, which indicates the intention of a significant number of public officials to bet on teleworking.
Jiménez has also pointed out that, in any case, it is about giving teleworking options to public employees, which It does not mean that the Administration templates are going to be transferred en masse and throughout the week to remote.
The IV Study on the state of digitization of Vodafone’s Spanish companies and public administrations was carried out between July and December 2020 by the telecommunications company in collaboration with the consulting firm Ipsos. For it, have carried out 3,554 telephone interviews with executives and those responsible for digitization of companies and institutions in Spain, selected to represent the group of organizations taking as reference the Central Directory of Companies of the National Institute of Statistics.