Proceedings of 8th European Assembly on telework (Telework2001)

55Table 5:Temporal autonomy in job in Europe 1999Workers with discretion over changes in start/finish <strong>of</strong>their working times, as % <strong>of</strong> labour forceDenmark 63.7Finland 77.2France 48.7Germany 63.1Ireland 57.9Italy 62.8Netherlands 59.9Spain 54.4Sweden 58.0United Kingdom 57.0Data: ECaTT (Base: persons in paid work) Source: empirica ECaTT 1999These distance-bridging properties <strong>of</strong> ICTs increase the ‘spatial flexibility’ <strong>of</strong> companies as well asworkers: Technically it becomes possible to choose locations for work processes more freely. Thelocation <strong>of</strong> work becomes variable in the short term, whereas it was practically fixed in the shortand middle term before. This makes them more adaptable to changes in their environment. Onepractical outcome <strong>of</strong> increased locational flexibility at the micro level is telework which is regardedas a typical example <strong>of</strong> e-Work and one <strong>of</strong> its main precursors. In comparison to other types <strong>of</strong>spatial flexibility, telework is today implemented mostly in a worker-centred way, in particularwith the aim to improve the compatibility <strong>of</strong> work and family life and to keep highly productiveknowledge workers happy.Telework has taken a rapid development in Europe over the past decade. Still, the 1999 figure <strong>of</strong> 9million teleworkers (including supplementary teleworkers) equates to just 6% <strong>of</strong> the labour forcein Europe. The range <strong>of</strong> telework penetration across <strong>European</strong> countries is enormous with Spainfinding itself at the tail end with 2.8% <strong>of</strong> the employees working as teleworkers, and Finland at thetop end with almost 17% teleworkers (see Table 2 on page 2).Tele-cooperation, i.e. ICT-enabled collaboration between workers who are located at differentworking sites, has become the common working mode for an increasing share <strong>of</strong> workers. Telecooperationis sometimes also called ‘in situ telework’, because, although workers appear tobe co-located in central <strong>of</strong>fice buildings, in fact they are <strong>of</strong>ten working closely together withproject partners at far away locations, while work-related interaction with next-door colleagues iscomparatively low. Evidence suggests that tele-cooperation has boosted worker productivity andinnovative performance throughout the EU economy by allowing flexible configurations <strong>of</strong> humancapital without actually moving people from one place to the other [18].