The use of telework was widespread with the Covid-19 pandemic and experts anticipate that it will be used more in the future, but without balance or negotiation, it entails risks for workers.
The «risk of invasion of the time of private and family life by work» makes teleworking a «phenomenon with dangerous dimensions for workers», cautions João Leal Amado, professor at the Faculty of Law of the University of Coimbra.
«There was always a lot of resistance» to telework, «from everyone, from workers, from employers», since it was always accepted that, «in practice, it might not allow for a better reconciliation of professional and personal life, but eventually to mix these two planes of people's lives and practically make the working day unlimited», he points out.
«The person no longer has time references and practically has to be available and working at any time», points out the professor of Labor Law.
«Teleworking gives the feeling that one has never worked so hard in life», summarizes the economist José Castro Caldas, considering that «it is much heavier and much less efficient». than face-to-face work.
"There is little that can replace collective work, in the context of organizations, whatever they may be, and it is from this face-to-face interaction, from this collective work, that ideas come out", he emphasizes, noting that interpersonal relationships through the digital means "are a source of difficulties in understanding and empathizing with others».
Recognizing that "there must be facets of telework that are creative and liberating, in the sense that they allow us to manage our time more flexibly", Castro Caldas does not doubt that "there are others that are absolutely impoverishing"-
Therefore, in the future, the use of telecommuting will have to be “very selective”, he believes. Even because there is a risk of “exhaustion”, warns the researcher at CoLABOR, a collaborative laboratory for work, employment and social protection, where he coordinates a line of research on work and employment.
“Somehow, we are seeing a little bit of the film of what the world would be like without social contact at work and I don't think we got to like what we are seeing”, observes sociologist Paulo Pedroso.
“Suddenly, the fact that, on a global scale, almost all of us are at risk of losing our job made us remember how important jobs are to our social identities, not only for income, but for social interaction”, he notes.
“If there is one thing that is clear from what happened, it is the enormous importance that, in the lives of the vast majority of people, work has”, confirms João Leal Amado.
The adaptation of legislation to the current crisis has largely involved labor relations, which "is the best proof to contradict what many had claimed, that work had almost died out and had lost its social centrality." points out.
António Brandão Moniz, professor at the Faculty of Science and Technology at Universidade Nova de Lisboa, says that telework «has all the potential to increase following» the ongoing crisis, which triggered «some important changes», which «have to do with, in particular, with the possibility that is now more evident of carrying out work mainly digitally, at a distance, not present in a specific workplace».
Until now, telework had an isolated application, it was "unappreciated by business entities, often reluctant, because they think they no longer have control over the worker and the execution of the work", he points out, giving as an example the resistance of the operators of call centers in adopting it, already in time of pandemic.
Teleworking – not always, but in certain cases – “should be more applied, especially so that it can support situations of workers who, for some reason, have to stay at home to support the family or for some problem of their own”, he maintains.
“Those who wanted to perform forms of telecommuting occasionally, for different reasons, now realize that this is easier”, he emphasizes.
At the same time, companies also had to organize this modality and could “evaluate the results of its application”.
This is not to say that «teleworking itself is only good, it can be good in some circumstances, but it can also bring other risks, which, many times, are not even noticeable for those who are working», admits Brandão Moniz.
The balance between advantages and disadvantages is "difficult to achieve" and, therefore, telework has to be "negotiated" between the parties, he stresses.
«I admit that this does not go back, in the sense of returning to the previous situation. Despite everything, it has been proven that there is a very wide range of activities that can be performed by workers at a distance, from home and not having to travel to the company», observes Leal Amado.
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