Telefónica Spain starts a four-day work pilot
Several media including Spain’s News reported that Telefónica Spain starts a four-day work week with a reduction in salary.
Telefónica Spain agreed with the final offer for the extension of the second related company agreement one more year (2022). In fact, it has included the alternative of implementing an online system with the debated four-day working day. Of course, if employees participate in the pilot program, they must accept a salary reduction. In this way, employees will work 32 hours a week (without changes in the day, well split, well continuous). It means that they will work eight hours a day from Monday to Thursday, voluntarily, in writing.
This option will be reversible by giving a one-month notice with just cause. Telefónica will accept all those requested with a maximum of 10% of the employees that make up the basic management. However, if requests exceed this percentage, the company will apply following organizational and activity criteria. For now, Telefónica will begin a three-month pilot test, from October until the end of the year. If the departments will not prevent its implementation, this pilot test will last in the first quarter of 2022.
Future of the pilot
From this moment, Telefónica will analyze the results of this pilot. The employees who participate in this pilot will be able to renew one more year. In fact, the company commit to teleworking after the Covid-19 crisis, which has forced different restrictions. Thus, the final proposal of the agreement includes two days a week of teleworking, which can accommodate about 10,000 employees.
Telefónica will equip the teleworking employee with a computer (smart PC or similar) as well as helmets. In addition, the company will offer a corporate mobile line with unlimited data, and maintain the current terms of the exclusive discounts for employees with respect to fixed connectivity.
Who is Telefónica?
According to its homepage, Telefónica is a company that is aware of the new challenges posed by today’s society. This is why they offer the means to facilitate communication between people. In addition, they provide people with the most secure and state of the art technology to live better.
Thanks to their innovative and attentive spirit with an immense technological potential, the company has more than 344 million clients. Furthermore, Telefónica operates in 13 countries and has a presence in 24, with and an average of 113,182 professionals.
In January-December 2020 Telefónica had consolidated revenues of 43,076 million euros and more than 345.4 million total accesses. What’s more, the telecom giant has 266 million mobile phones accesses, 20 million Internet and data accesses and 8 million pay TV accesses.
Four-day work will be the next standard?
After the pandemic, many people across the globe experience what we called “the new normality”. Remote working is one example of “the new normality”. However, many companies in the world already introduced remote working policy before the pandemic. Therefore, we can say that the pandemic is accelerating this kind of new work and life. Four-day work can be another example.
Some companies all over the world tested four-day work before the pandemic. Of course, the analysis of the results has both pros and cons. Some pros are the increase of employee’s productivity, more time with their family and more opportunities to enhance their skills. On the other hand, some cons are more stressed and condensed working days, and the decrease of their salary.
There is no clear answer about four-day work, but the experiments are necessary to move our discussions forward. At the same time, to set new regulations or rules is another important aspect. When it comes to remote working, we can see the Spain’s case. Thus, we will see new policies in relation to four-day work in the near future like remote working.
Related Articles...