Contrary to what is happening in other countries, Portuguese companies are not giving up on teleworking.
After remote working became the norm during the COVID-19 pandemic, working from home is facing a backlash, with several companies asking their employees to return to the office.
“What’s happening now is a process of renegotiation between employers and their workforce in terms of what remote working will look like in the future,” Mark Stuart, a lecturer at Leeds University Business School, told Euronews.
Although there are workers who have never been able to work remotely, those who have been able to experience working remotely appreciate the fact that they don’t have to commute to work, that they reduce travel costs to the office and even have a better work-life balance, says Stuart.
Mansoor Soomro, future of work enthusiast and Senior Lecturer in Sustainability and International Business at Teesside University in the UK, firmly believes that teleworking is here to stay.
“People have moved and don’t want to move,” he said in an interview with Euronews. “People have adapted to the newfound flexibility and don’t want to give it up.”
In Portugal it seems that teleworking is here to stay
Companies in Portugal don’t seem to be moving towards a return to the office. That’s what the official figures show, as well as the 12 companies interviewed by Expresso, which point to positive or zero results for productivity and a substantial increase in worker motivation and satisfaction.
In the second quarter of this year, around 908,900 workers in Portugal, representing 19.3% of the country’s employed population, were working remotely (totally or partially), according to the latest figures from the National Statistics Institute (INE). This means that they worked from home using information technology tools. The figure puts teleworking in the country at levels very close to those recorded during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Companies can’t recruit without teleworking
Remote or at least hybrid working is a requirement for jobseekers to start negotiating a job offer. At the moment, it’s as decisive as the salary package offered by the company and already carries as much or more weight, depending on the role, than the career progression plan offered by the employer. “If remote or hybrid work isn’t on the negotiating table, most jobseekers won’t even go for it,” says Nuno Troni, director of recruitment consultancy Randstad.
Nuno believes that, in a job market marked by hiring difficulties and increasingly fierce competition from international recruiters, “if flexibility isn’t part of the equation, they simply won’t be able to hire”.
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