Telecommuting' refers to workers doing their jobs from home for part of each week and communicating with their office using computer technology.

Telecommuting is growing in many countries and is expected to be common for most office workers in the coming decades.

How do you think society will be affected by the growth of telecommuting?

One of the unattended consequences of the epidemic Covid-19 is a radical change of attitude among employees regarding telecommuting. Technological companies and traditional industries announce that working from home is the new norm. It is not futile to examine the social consequence this evolution might evoke.

If mobile work is nowadays presented, sometimes with reason, like an opportunity of liberation from constrains of daily commuting, the time wasted in traffic, even the nick picking supervision of a superior in the hierarchy, it is also reasonable to stress the cost of it. With its popularity spreading across industries, this new practice of telework begins to reveal some signs of social impact more profound than what one imagined to be a simple switch of location for work.

Among those worrying signs stands the well-being of employees at work. A recent study conducted at the United Kingdom has already revealed an augmentation of muscle pain, a decrease of physical activity, excessively longer working hours, irregularities, and insomnia. Other signs: lack of social interactions, disruption of balance between one's professional life and private life, and the sentiment of isolation. People started to ask themselves whether they work from home or sleep at office.

Among the costs of liberation from constraints of work, the most toxic one is the growth of digital surveillance. If employers willingly accept virtual work, it's because the possibility of controlling employees via the Internet is infinite. A simple visit to the website will suffice to have a peek at everything: undetectable surveillance of keyboard activities, utilization of applications, screen captures, activation of web cameras, etc. The new norms of telework here is more dystopic: employees are forever under the surveillance of capitalism.

Furthermore, the development of telecommuting might also undermine the progress we've made in social structures. Let's go back a few centuries. In the beginning of the industrial age, in the 18th-19th century, there was a radical transformation of working mode. Artisans and workers started to gather around machines in factories, gradually got rid of the old habit of working from homes. This new mode of industrial work has laid a few basic principles: unity of place, time, and action. Human work are concentrated in a certain place (a factory, then an office) for a fixed period of time (8 hours) within the framework of unity of action (workers are involved collectively in a single process of production).

Within the structure of unity, industrial countries have progressively improved working conditions: the amelioration of working environment, the protection of employees' health and security, the prevention of professional injuries, reduction of working hours, cultivation of sense of belonging and unity, which is reflected in company culture, and the collective negotiation...

In this way, the unity of time, place and action have constituted a structural unity in industrial society. Sadly, all of our efforts made here are vulnerable to erosion. With telecommuting, the place, the timetable for work, the social interactions, even the collective spirits are under threat. All of the protections connected to unity of time and place of work will also fade away: how to enforce unity of working times to people deserted in isolated places? How to prevent social psychological risks implicated in the organization and content of work (stress, harassment, burn-out, suicide)? How to create collective spirit and collective negotiation? How to reduce inequalities in terms of working conditions: work from home, but which home?

Working in isolation might induce social risks:

Employees are often without access to managers who hide behind algorithms and application interfaces. What's worse, they are deprived of social interactions with colleagues, and susceptible to unpredictability of working hours and poor pay checks.

To prevent this from spiraling into the fate of all mobile workers, we need to reinvent social structures of unity compatible to the digital age. For instance, a new virtual workplace allows telecommuters to join together and share their experiences. A new law of limiting work hours for mobile work should be drafted and enforced (for instance, the range of unplugged hours). Also, we can reinvent new virtual form of work union, and cultivate a new sense of belonging.

These solutions will not suffice. We also need to address issues including the role of supervision in the new context, the cost of equipment for employees to work from home, the evaluation of performances, the exercise of right of workers, new forms of collective action.... An endless list indeed.