Claudia Fernandes: The changes and impacts of remote working since the Covid-19 health crisis. Remote working through the lens of occupational health and mental health.

This doctoral research project focuses on remote working, that is to say, a form of remote work organisation which, over the past year and a half, has been undergoing a major transformation. It aims to re-examine the experience of teleworking and its implementation in the corporate world, in a context where such arrangements have been imposed as part of the health measures taken by the French government to combat the spread of Covid-19.

Whilst numerous surveys and studies were conducted on remote working in the decades leading up to the health crisis, the current value of new research lies in the fact that the context in which it is being implemented has changed significantly. Firstly, companies were forced to impose it at extremely short notice on various categories of employees, often covering a much larger proportion of working hours than in the past. Remote working was therefore not a choice or the result of negotiation, whereas it could have been prior to the health crisis and government measures. Consequently, a large number of employees had no choice but to work remotely and, within a matter of days, to learn how to use new tools, incorporate new practices into their work and communicate in a different way.

This trend has also helped to reshape perceptions of work and blur the boundaries between home and work life. It has led to confusion regarding roles and time management, forcing some employees to work remotely whilst simultaneously carrying out domestic chores or home-schooling their children. Finally, during this period, remote working has been linked to employees’ mental health. In other words, it appears that this way of organising work has had a very significant negative impact on mental health. The aim here is to attempt to understand the priority given by companies and the various stakeholders within them to occupational health issues in the context of remote working since the first lockdown. More specifically, the focus is on the link that has been made between this mode of remote work organisation and mental health. Several time periods will be considered: periods of ‘predominantly’ or even ‘exclusively’ remote working (in terms of working hours), introduced following the first lockdown in March 2020; periods of partial or even full return to the relevant workplaces; and future periods.

This research project draws on interactionist sociology and lies at the intersection of several branches of the discipline, such as the sociology of work and activity, organisations, institutions, and information and communication technologies. It aims to study telework and the importance placed on occupational health and mental health, focusing on three levels of analysis: macro, meso and micro-sociological.