1996 - European Telework Week

Telework 96
2.3. Telework in Europe Penetration, potential and practice
Telework has long been an attractive concept, which has inspired numerous estimates of
its likely spread and penetration over the past few decades. In the 1970s some authors
had high expectations when they believed that "all Americans could be homeworkers by
1990" (AT&T, cited in Huws 1984 5 ).
A decade, later others stated that "by the year 2000 approximately 40% of the employees
in the US will be teleworkers" (Institute for the Future, cited in Müllner 1985 6 ). Other
estimates are that in many developed countries 10-15% of the workforce will be
teleworking to some degree by the end of the century.
These examples show that the closer to the present the estimates were, the less optimistic
they turned out to be, as authors realised that the spread of telework was going to be
more evolutionary than revolutionary.
The situation is similarly confusing when it comes to estimating the penetration of
telework in different countries round the world. When looking only at the most recent
estimates, there appears to be a wide range in the actual number of teleworkers. This is
partly due to differences in definitions of telework used by various authors and their
differing methods for carrying out the estimations.
It was against this background that Empirica decided to generate a representative
empirical basis study providing reliable figures on the penetration of telework, and
enabling its likely future development to be estimated accurately. To achieve this,
Empirica carried out representative surveys of decision-makers and employees in
organisations and the general population in the four largest EC Member States in 1985
(Germany, the UK, France, Italy) (Huws/Korte/Robinson 1990), and again in 1994, this
time adding Spain to the list.
The 1994 surveys were carried out as part of the TELDET project (Telework
Developments and Trends, Project T1016 of the Telework Stimulations Activities of
DGXIII-B) 7 .
2.3.1. Telework penetration
According to the results of the surveys in 1994 the penetration of telework in European
organisations is around 5%, and the actual number of teleworkers in the five largest EC
countries approximately 1.1 million. Extrapolating this figure to the whole of the EU
gives a total of 1.25 million teleworkers.
5 Huws, U.: The New Homeworkers. New Technology and the Changing Location of White-collar
Work. Low Pay Unit, London 1984
6 Müllner, W.: Privatisierung des Arbeitsplatzes. Chancen, Risiken und rechtliche Gestaltbarkeit der
Telearbeit. Boorberg Verlag, Stuttgart 1985
7 The partners in the TELDET project led by empirica, Bonn (Germany) and financially supported by
the EC DGXIII-B are: empirica (D), IDATE (F), Work Research Centre (IRL), INMARK (E) and
INNOVA (I)
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