TELEWORKING AND WELLBEING: DO WE STILL NEED A MANAGER?

Abstract

In response to sanitary risks caused by Covid-19 pandemic, thousand companies have widely established teleworking at home for their employees. Some of them ended up with full-time teleworking, some others alternated between on-site working and teleworking, while a little part stayed on-site all the time. In this context, matter of well-being preservation at work tuned out to be a central issue for leaders and supervisors. They have coped with many dangers: isolation, increased stress, mental workload, moral exhaustion, or else, blurring of work-life balance of teleworkers. This situation brings us to wonder whether workers have different needs in terms of leadership to preserve well-being, depending on their work configuration. To answer to this question, we conducted a questionnaire survey of 2968 employees in a French public organization between November and December 2020. Our results show that all work configurations require social support of supervisor, whereas teleworking configuration request more implication from him. Alternation between teleworking and on- site working call for a participative decision making, to which is added a need of manager’s exemplarity for full-time teleworking. In view of the results, a remote supervisor appears as an expanded supervisor.