At a time when workplaces are facing their third crisis in six years, the real question is not whether remote work should be the norm, but why it takes yet another disaster to transform the way we organize work.
At 9pm, shops, restaurants and cafes plunge into darkness across the city of Cairo, where a strict curfew to mitigate the energy shock triggered by the conflict in the Gulf.
The measure may be difficult to apply with a population accustomed to long nights out together, but the prospects are far from reassuring.
Reports coming from the interior of the country indicate that the posts are becoming no fuelfueling fears that the emergency will last longer than expected.
Parts of Africa and Asia appear to be ahead of Europe when it comes to confronting the scarcity of resources, and in some regions numerous decisive measures.
A mandatory day of teleworking in Egyptan additional weekly day off in Sri Lanka, a week of four day work for public sector employees in the Philippines, the closure of campus university students in Bangladesh, controls on fuel consumption in Myanmar and rotary cuts of electricity in South Sudan.
Although supply restrictions may be less severe in Europe, this does not mean immunity. The European Commissioner for Energy, Dan Jorgensenhe acknowledged, warning that Europe faces a “very serious situation” with no end in sight.
Jørgensen apontou as recommendations from the International Energy Agencywhich include working from home whenever possible, reducing speed limits on highways, encouraging the use of public transport and avoiding unnecessary travel.
The EU is now preparing to present a non-binding initiative to promote teleworking as a way to alleviate the energy crisisreducing commuting and energy consumption in office buildings.
Despite firm recommendations and restrictionsthe dominant rhetoric is that drastic times require drastic but temporary and that, as soon as the current crisis passes, everything will return to normal.
If this sounds all too familiar, it’s because we’ve already been herehe writes Antonio Aloisiprofessor of Labor Law at IE University, in an article in .
Response to crisis em modo déjà vu
The parallels with the measures taken to fighting the Covid-19 pandemic are impressive, but there is a element that stands out: remote work.
The home office is once again mobilized as emergency responsereinforcing the idea that only exceptional circumstances can justify changes in work standards.
In 2020, the objective was to “flatten the infection curve”; today, office buildings are underoccupied to reduce energy consumption. And yet the current rush of uneven measures is more than slightly reminiscent of the pandemic years. Institutional, business leadersunions and politicians seem to have been, once again, caught off guard.
However, the effects of war are materializing in the form of stagflation (inflation without growth), accompanied by a contraction in world trade in a context of increasing ecological pressure. These converging pressures force us to rethink work organizationwhile making structural investment in sustainability more politically viable.
In short, it becomes increasingly difficult to justify resistance to more “heterodox” working methods that can reduce dependence on fossil energy.
Equally worrying is the risk that the experience of workers with flexible arrangements will be shaped by this erratic and reactive approach — are sent home when governments or companies face increasing pressure, and called back to the office as soon as the situation is resolvednotes Aloisi.
At the start of the pandemic, governments, businesses and ordinary citizens were thrown into the unknown. Parents suddenly found themselves having to juggle work, childcare and homeschooling, while new hires improvised desks in shared apartmentsif noisy.
With the current oil crisis, the pattern repeats itself. But the exodus from corporate headquarters is motivated less by protecting public health or a commitment to better working conditions, and more by short-term cost-cutting considerations.
Return to office orders
In the public debate, the issue of remote work has become profoundly polarizednot least due to the position taken by some executive directors, including leaders from Amazon, X and Goldman Sachswhich imposed strict return-to-office mandates (RTO).
In some cases, these mandates were even used as a mechanism to force voluntary layoffseffectively reducing staff without resorting to formal layoffs.
Workers are increasingly more pushed back to the officeo, or teleworking is granted to them only under carefully calibrated conditions. Many regimes andexclude remote work on Mondays and Fridaysfor example, to ensure that flexibility does not translate into freedom of movement.
Furthermore, only a small number of companies invested the time and resources necessary to create work environments truly prepared for work outside the facilities.
The investigation points to a deep and persistent distrust in relation to unsupervised worker autonomyincreasingly reflected in the use of surveillance technologies such as keystroke monitoring, periodic screenshots and email analysis.
When permitted, working from home has become fertile ground for these tools of employer surveillance (““), fueling the perception that remote work is merely a reluctant concession.
Remote work benefits everyone
The evidence challenges this antiquated approach. Stanford economist Nick Bloom demonstrates that hybrid remote work has stabilized as a “new normal.” In the United States, it has stabilized at about 28% of paid work days in 2025-2026 — a dramatic increase from the pre-pandemic level of just 5% — without negative economic repercussions.
Also in Europe there are innovative experiences. Employers from different sectors are testing more flexible regimesfrom unlimited work-from-anywhere policies to shorter work weeks, to attract and retain talent.
Achieving a truly functional and virtuous model of working off-site requires a significant degree of bottom-up inventiveness. But the delayed promise of a management revolution It could also be achieved through a more favorable legal framework.
At EU level, This process has already been startedfollowing the European Parliament’s call to action in 2021. To date, two rounds of consultation have been organized with social partners, with the aim of introducing a right for workers to disconnect and ensuring “fair” teleworking.
The underlying view of the query appears to be shaped by a combination of legitimate concernsalthough often exaggerated. Remote work is seen as catalyst for permanent online availability and as a threat to safety and health.
What is largely missing, however, is a more ambitious attempt to seize the political moment as a opportunity to rethink the organization of working time.
Current regulatory frameworks remain anchored in a linear, rigid, hierarchical and male-biased model. What reality demands, on the other hand, is a transition to more asynchronous, sustainable formscollaborative and emancipatory ways of organizing time and space.
Stop improvising, start anticipating
Institutions, at all levels, could go beyond good intentions and start practicing what they preach. According to the 2024 OECD/EU survey of civil servants, around two in five (37.2%) never work remotelywhile only one in five (22.6%) does so one to two days a week.
However, the voluntary remote workwhether regular or occasional, is associated with higher levels of well-being. This is particularly relevant for workers in back-office roles or providing customer service, for whom presence in the office is often not a necessity.
If talking about teleworking in times of crisis seems frivolous, it is equally frivolous to hold on to outdated ways of organizing work.
Workers going to the office just to participate in video calls with customers, managers stuck in traffic just to get to a cubicle and send emails, consultants getting on a plane for a ten-minute presentation—all of this reflects a retrograde culture which should have been reformed a long time ago.
It also exposes thes limits of a model which assumes that the planet’s resources are unlimited.
Younger generations are no longer willing to trade freedom and purpose for presentism and conformism. A greater degree of maturity in management must now be demanded.
Reconfiguring collaboration flows, work structures, and organizational patterns should not be treated as a temporary fix, but as a long term investmentwith positive side effects in terms of productivity.
As part of this change, rethink working time it has to be the next step in breaking long-entrenched taboos.
Today, when workplaces face their third crisis in six yearsthe real question is not whether remote work should be the norm, but why it takes yet another disaster to transform the way we organize work.
