“We are conducting this survey for the tenth time, on the quality of working life, working conditions and the state of well-being of employees in Luxembourg. There are downward trends, and one employee in four has the firm intention to change jobs. This worries us,” explained , president of the Chamber of Employees (Chambre des salariés, CSL), on Thursday 9 February, during the presentation of the results of the Quality of work Index Luxembourg 2022 study.
The project was launched in 2012 by the CSL in collaboration with the University of Luxembourg. This year the survey questioned a representative sample of 2,696 people between June and September 2022, 52.8% of whom were residents and 47.1% cross-border commuters. “The overall quality of work index has risen slightly compared to 2021 (54.9 points compared to 53.9), but the trend over nine years remains negative,” says David Büchel, occupational psychologist and management consultant at the CSL.
Conflicts on work-life balance
Among the main figures, the feeling of having opportunities for advancement or promotion in the company has improved very significantly, reaching its highest level since 2014, but the feeling of participation in decisions and autonomy remain at the lowest level, as does satisfaction with remuneration, which has reached its lowest level (54.1 compared to 59.4 in 2014).
In terms of the sub-indices measuring well-being and health, “the mega-trend of recent years continues unabated, with work-life conflict rising to a new high, 40% higher than in 2014,” continues Büchel. The risk of burnout is stagnating, but the score is still 30.6% higher than in 2016.
Since 2017, a section has been dedicated to a specific theme within the survey. For the 2022 edition, it is “meaning of work + teleworking + loneliness at work.” The use of telework has evolved in recent years. “In 2020, with the beginning of the health crisis, telework was massively imposed and remained frequent after the phase of generalised confinement (between the end of March and the end of May), with 33% of the employees surveyed having recourse to it at least several times a month. In 2017, the share of regular teleworkers was 21%. For 2021, we have seen an acceleration in the use of telework for the June to October survey period, with 40% of employees teleworking regularly. In 2022, with the end of the coronavirus pandemic, we cannot however speak of a decline in the situation compared to the pre-crisis situation with regard to the frequency of telework use. Indeed, 35% of the respondents still teleworked every day or several days a week (21%) or several times a month (14%).”
CSL claims 88 days of telework per year
And this has consequences for employees’ wishes, with a total of 50% wanting a ‘hybrid’ form of working (of which 29% would like to telework more than half of the time and 21% would prefer to work less than half of the time at home). 5% would like to telework exclusively and 13% of respondents say they would prefer to work exclusively in the office if they had the choice. The most enthusiastic teleworkers are found among 25-44 year olds, cross-border commuters, professionals and scientists, and employees in the “information and communication” and “financial and insurance activities” sectors.
The CSL is also calling for an increase in the number of teleworking days for all employees to allow at least two days of teleworking per week for all workers. This corresponds to 88 days of telework per year (on an assumption of 220 working days), and thus a threshold of 40% for social security. “We have been demanding harmonisation of telework rules for all border countries and residents as well, even before covid-19. The pandemic has accelerated these discussions, which has pushed us to put forward our demand again, we do not accept any discrimination between resident and non-resident employees, Luxembourgers or non-Luxembourgers. Today we live in a society where the rules are different according to nationality, and that is unmanageable,” says Back.
Reducing the working week
And on Thursday 9 February, a telework sub-committee meeting was also held in the Chamber of Deputies, at which the unions were received. “All the trade unions are of the same opinion, we need to harmonise the rules on telework, whether in terms of taxation or social security, and this morning we defended this cause, but it also goes further,” explained Back, who is also president of the OGBL union. “We are also talking in a general way about the way telework is applied in companies, the questions it raises such as safety at work, the right to disconnect, the equipment available, etc. We have an agreement with the employers on how to apply telework in Luxembourg, which is unique and already good.”
On the subject of flexible working hours, which has been the subject of debate for several months, “our demand has always been to reduce the weekly working hours by law, while maintaining the salary, and then to see what the implementation methods will be. Because we can’t say for the whole country and for all jobs that we work X hours per week, so it has to be applied differently in each sector, and this has to be done in joint discussions within the negotiations of collective labour agreements. The general reduction of working time and the question of flexibility are very complicated because employers often understand something different from us, if we are talking about flexibility in working time, what is needed above all is that the employee has a certain autonomy in the management of their working hours,” said Back.
This story was first published in French on . It has been translated and edited for Delano.