Credit: EWCS 2015

The pilot project "Teleworking" in the public service has improved the well-being of concerned employees in Luxembourg.

This finding was revealed at today's presentation of the first results of teleworking, a pilot project launched in October 2017 by the Ministry of the Civil Service and Administrative Reform. The project, which was based on the 2016 Rifkin study, was developed as a new approach allowing agents to better balance work and private life.

The aim of the pilot project was to test teleworking in an active and innovative way, within a limited framework, in order to identify potential problems and to formulate recommendations at the legislative level on the basis of employees' experiences.

Indeed, a legal base exists since 2003, completed in 2012 by a Grand-Ducal regulation. Despite this, the practice of teleworking has so far been very low in the public service. A first pilot project, carried out in 2007 and 2008, had very little success with a total of 7 participants in 3 different administrations. Moreover, a survey conducted in 2015 showed that 87% of the administrations stated that they did not have teleworkers among their agents and that, in all, it was estimated that there were 60 teleworkers among all the State agents.

Nevertheless, the new pilot project saw more enthusiasm: a hundred agents working in 11 different entities participated and 13 categories of trades were represented. In addition, following the positive assessment of the current project, other entities also expressed their interest in being able to participate in the pilot project. An initial assessment of teleworkers and their co-workers showed that teleworking has significantly improved the well-being of the people concerned. These results were confirmed by supervisors, who, for their part, found that the motivation of teleworkers had increased. The impact was deemed neutral on user-friendliness and work atmosphere and 75% of colleagues of teleworkers surveyed were also interested in the possibility of teleworking.

Given the significant effects of teleworking on the organisation of administrations and services, the Ministry of Civil Service and Administrative Reform has expressed its desire to continue the pilot project provisionally at least until the end of the year, in order to to have maximum feedback to develop recommendations to modify the current Grand-Ducal Regulation and to better manage its implementation of teleworking.