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Encadré n° 1 : Promesses, pratiques et problèmes du télétravail : le projet eGap
The eGap research project seeks to understand the relative status of telework within small and mediumsized
enterprises (SMEs), especially the factors that promote and inhibit its adoption and implementation.
This work is being undertaken in five regions in Europe which are Rhône-Alpes (France), Emilia Romagna
(Italy), Tampere (Finland), Central Transdanubia (Hungary) and the ‘Greater West London Wedge’ (UK).
An earlier quantitative phase of the research involved at least 300 SMEs interviewed by telephone in each
region. The qualitative phase reported on here builds on this earlier work through approximately sixty
semi-structured interviews being conducted in each region. The aim is to gain a greater understanding of,
inter alia, attitudes towards telework, implementation practices of telework, and the enabling and
inhibiting factors influencing its adoption.
Fifty of these interviews were with owners/managers and employees of small firms. Issues addressed here
were based on the following broad themes:
1) preparations for implementation
2) operational practices
3) corporate social responsibility
4) enablers and inhibitors to adoption
5) social infrastructural factors
6) outputs and effects of telework
A further ten interviews were conducted with ‘other stakeholders’, such as regional policymakers and trade
unions, and an additional subset of questions were put to them in regard to their role in telework adoption.
The findings from these regional analyses have been brought together in an overview, “Transnational
Report of the Qualitative Research Phase: A Comparative Analysis of Regional Findings”, submitted to the
Commission in November 2003. Some of these findings are presented below.
In terms of preparations for implementation, only the Hungarian partners pointed to structural
deficiencies in regard to ICT use, noting the “weak integration of ICT” into business processes of firms,
and the “high price of Internet use”. Otherwise technology for the most part was seen as an enabler to
telework. With the possible exception of Italy and larger firms in Emilia Romagna, there was not much
evidence for proactive decision making by firms in the adoption of telework. Additionally there was very
little evidence of proactively determined training regimes for those teleworking in any of the partner
regions. Firms did have training sessions for ICT use, though as the UK report observes, many of those
teleworking had pre-existing skills that they brought to bear whilst operating remotely. The Hungarian
partners are very critical of training provision in Hungary in general, whilst at the same time implying that
successful telework practice is not a function solely of ICT skills. Generic skills such as ‘time management’
are also attributes that teleworkers require. However, as the Italian authors observe, “entrepreneurs judge
that the work carried out (at) long distance is the same as that done in the office”, a sentiment echoed by
the Finns. Partners generally note that any training is ‘on the job’. The implication of this is that generic
skills are not thought – at least in corporate training terms – to be requirements for successful teleworking.
There are new SMEs that have seized opportunities to exploit the new ICTs and that practise telework
perhaps in virtual enclaves (even if global in scope). According to the UK report, some of these new firms,
“exhibited advanced use of technology by contemporary standards, and appeared comfortable working
with, for example, ‘interactive whiteboards’ (by which documents can be seen and annotated by more than
one user during a virtual dialogue) and audio or video-conferencing”. Nevertheless, firms such as these are
in a minority in the five regions.
In operational terms, telework appears to be practised by a small minority of workers overall. Rather than the
more radical approaches that proponents of virtual working would like, the adoption of teleworking, for the
most part, appears incremental in approach, complementing existing work practices rather than reconfiguring
them. It became apparent that most teleworkers in SMEs across the five regions are managers, sales
personnel and other specialist mobile workers who, in functional terms, have been working remotely since
well before the Internet arrived.
Nevertheless, there is evidence too that telework is an under-reported phenomenon. Finnish, Italian and
UK partners highlight the fact that the term ‘telework’ itself is problematic in that some interviewees, who
had originally stated that there was no teleworking in their firm at the start of interviews, after discussion
changed their minds and declared that there was. Further, the Finns note that some telework is introduced