84% of the Spanish employed population wants to continue telecommuting after the pandemic. And it is that, Spain is the second European country that most demands it; with 23.6% of people who want to prioritize it, our country is placed behind Denmark.
This is how the National Observatory of Technology and Society defends it in its publication “Flash: Teleworking in Spain. Before, during and after the pandemic”, where analyzes the existence and preference of online work in order to foresee how this model could develop over the next few years.
Implementation of teleworking in Spain
Remote work was present in our country before the pandemic, although it was a minority. Well, in March 2020, 74.5% of adults in Spain had never worked in this way. Only 7.3% did it daily, 5.3% several times a week and 4.6% several times a month.
These figures placed Spain at the bottom of the EU; ahead of Lithuania, Ireland and Italy, and far from Estonia and Finland, where more than half of the population employed before that date, teleworked. The pandemic accelerated the necessary changes to make it possible and caused 31.7% of the population to start working remotely.
84% of the Spanish employed population wants to continue teleworking after the pandemic
Fewer remote hours after the pandemic
The return to normality has been cutting those hours; from 16.7 hours in the summer of 2020 to 15.1 in the following spring, at which time the average number of hours teleworked in Spain was less than two days a week.
Among the positions that allow more telecommuting are those that can be done with a computer; 87.9% of people employed in the technology sectors have the option of working online. Also those of scientific and technical, financial and insurance professions, as well as real estate.
This last sector is, together with education, one of the ones that allows more teleworking, but where it is least used; of the 87.2% of real estate personnel who can do it, only 37.1% do it and in education only 20.5% do it, when 60.1% could do it.
Sectors that ask to return to face-to-face
The majority of the Spanish population is in favor of online work. 83.7% of people who are asked if they want to telework when there are no health restrictions, answer yes.
This is the third highest percentage in the EU, behind Finland and Sweden. Spain is the second European country that most demands daily teleworking; with 23.6% of people who want to prioritize it, our country is placed behind Denmark.
When asked precisely how many days they want to work online, the answer varies depending on how many they can already do. People whose work requires attendance express their desire to expand their options, as is the case in the health or social sector.
George is Digismak’s reported cum editor with 13 years of experience in Journalism