The end of a large part of the sanitary measures in relation to Covid has caused many companies to recover the face-to-face work model. According to the Survey on Equipment and Use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) in Households, 14% of employed employees in Spain teleworked during 2022, something that contrasts with the 17.6% who carried out their work tasks remotely in 2021 .
In fact, some companies in the United Kingdom have chosen to pay an extra salary to workers who decide to go to the offices five days a week instead of teleworking from home. But this is not a very popular option in sectors that only need a computer and internet connection to be able to carry out their work. And it is that the possibility of staying at home saves us travel time and allows greater conciliation.
This has been analyzed by the Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) in one of its latest studies from January 2023, where they point out that, on average, remote employees in Spain saved up to 63 minutes a day by not having to go out on a regular basis. face to face at work. This research has taken into account data from up to 27 countries and on average has discovered that citizens spend up to 72 minutes a day to get to or return to their workplaces.
Time that teleworkers will save each day
“We estimate that working from home saved around two hours per week on average per worker in 2021 and 2022,” remote a few days a week. In Spain the data indicates that the daily saving is 63 minutes, far from the average that rises to 72 minutes and other countries such as China or Japan that invest 102 and 100 minutes a day in these trips.
In Europe, for its part, most countries spend similar hours each day going to offices. Our French neighbors will save one minute less per day than the Spanish, while in Poland it reaches 54 minutes and in the Netherlands 77.
But this is not the only conclusion they have reached in the report, since they have also analyzed how workers spend this extra daily time, and more than a third spend it working more. Although it is true that the limits of digital disconnection at home are diluted, due to the ease of turning on the computer again, this research indicates that employees use their free time both in other jobs and in leisure (34%) and care of relatives (11%).
In Spain these figures are turned around, since the favorite activity of employees when they stop working is leisure, specifically 43% indicate that this extra hour is used daily to enjoy their hobbies. Likewise, 31% continue to work both in their usual job and in other secondary jobs and 12% dedicate their time to care.
In addition, the researchers point out that living with children under 14 years of age has great effects on the management of this additional time. “Women with children spend 11.4 minutes more of their daily time on caregiving activities. For men, the corresponding figure is around 9 minutes.”
