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The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic triggered an unprecedented surge in teleworking rates across the European Union. In response, various European countries, including Spain, enacted new regulations to strike a balance between promoting telework and safeguarding against its negative impacts on working conditions.

In this article, we examine the 2020 Spanish regulation on telework and discuss some of its key challenges based on its implementation across three economic sectors. Our analysis draws on empirical evidence gathered within the European project “TWING - Exploring the contribution of social dialogue and collective bargaining in the promotion of decent and productive telework in the post-COVID-19 scenario”,[1] funded by the European Commission. In addition, we provide a brief overview of the current understanding of teleworking effects and trends within European Union (EU) countries.

Until now, the experience of teleworking and its effects have yielded more questions than answers. The emergence and proliferation of new information and communication technologies (ICT) have enabled companies to explore increasingly flexible work arrangements over recent decades, blending spatial and temporal flexibility to varying extents. Unlike the rigid full-time “stationary teleworking” in the 1980s, today, there are various hybrid forms of work organisation. These models vary depending on the level of autonomy afforded to workers in choosing their workplace(s), working hours and the frequency of remote work.[2]

As teleworking has evolved, so too has our understanding of it. While early narratives tended to be predominately techno-optimistic, extolling its advantages across various dimensions, recent research reveals contradictory findings. For businesses, there is debate surrounding the balance between the benefits of cost savings and attracting talent on one hand, and the challenges associated with productivity in a more complex organisational context on the other.[3]

For employees, its paradoxical nature is underscored: it offers greater autonomy in structuring their work hours to suit their needs and preferences, yet it can result in longer work hours due to constant connectivity and even restrict their control over their “personal time” due to increased irregularity and unpredictability in work schedules.[4]  At a broader level, there is ongoing debate, and even scepticism, regarding the impact of telework on addressing environmental objectives[5] (such as pollution reduction) and social objectives[6] (reducing gender inequalities and enhancing employment opportunities for disadvantaged groups).

Teleworking trends in Europe

An analysis of teleworking trends in Europe reveals a widespread increase, albeit with significant variations between countries. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, Eurostat data indicated that telework was marginal or almost non-existent in Eastern and Southern European countries. Conversely, in Nordic countries and several Western European countries (such as the Netherlands), over a quarter of employees reported working from home at least part of the time.

The onset of the pandemic triggered a significant surge in telework across all EU nations. However, by 2023, teleworking rates tended to be higher in countries where it was more prevalent before the pandemic. Moreover, disparities between certain countries have widened. As depicted in Figure 1, most Nordic and Western European countries, previously exhibiting above-average teleworking rates, also saw larger increases in the prevalence of remote work compared to Southern and Eastern European counterparts between 2019 and 2023. During this period, countries like Slovenia, Portugal, Romania, Greece, Slovakia, Hungary and the Czech Republic experienced teleworking rate increases of less than five percentage points, while Finland, Denmark, Belgium, Malta, the Netherlands and Ireland witnessed increases ranging from 10 to 17 percentage points.

Spain has mirrored the trend of Southern and Eastern European countries, experiencing a growth of 5.9%, yet still falling below the European average (14.3% compared to the EU’s 24.1%).

Spanish regulation

Despite the pandemic prompting various legislative reforms across EU countries, regulatory approaches to remote work still exhibit significant differences, largely stemming from diverse traditions and employment governance models. In Nordic countries, telework is exclusively regulated through collective bargaining, aligning with their voluntarist model of labour relations. In some Western European countries like Austria or the Netherlands, legislation has barely changed and provides only general clauses, which must be further elaborated through collective bargaining or agreements within companies. Meanwhile, several Eastern (e.g. Slovakia, Poland) and Southern European countries (e.g. Greece, Portugal) stand out for the breadth of the issues addressed in their reforms.[7]

Spain is positioned among the EU nations that have extensively amended teleworking legislation since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Its approach, comparatively speaking, leans more towards safeguarding workers rather than simply facilitating access.[8] Notably, regulations concerning the right to disconnect and new provisions addressing occupational hazard prevention have been introduced. However, the two main legislative reforms on telework (Royal Decree-Law 28/2020 and Law 10/2021) have taken an approach that, despite the thoroughness of certain provisions, delegates the development and substance of most labour rights outlined in the new legislation to collective bargaining.[9]

This viewpoint offers the primary advantage of flexibility, allowing social actors (unions and business organisations) to customise teleworking regulations to suit the particularities of each sector, economic activity or even individual company. However, its main drawback is the risk of fragmented and unequal regulation, where teleworking access conditions and teleworkers’ rights may vary depending on the differing opportunities and resources available to unions in each sector or company to influence collective bargaining content.

The research conducted within the TWING project has centred on three sectors where telework is technically viable for a relatively high proportion of employees: the financial sector, technology consultancy and the chemical industry. Sectoral analysis reveals the challenges faced in collective bargaining to define teleworking regulations. In the three sectors studied, teleworking discussions within sectoral collective bargaining have primarily revolved around issues of cost compensation and resource provision. Crucial matters concerning the quality of teleworking, such as regulating access conditions, workers’ autonomy in scheduling their working hours, preventing occupational hazards, or establishing the right to disconnect, have not even been broached in negotiations.