The bosses of very small businesses (TPE, less than 20 employeesaccording to the criteria of the Ministry of Economy) are 72% to say they are “unfavorable” to the four-day week. This is what emerges from the second part of the 76th Barometer of SME, carried out by Ifop and commissioned by Fiducial – a company specialized in the administrative and financial support of SME and SMEs. This study estimates that the managers of SME “are not very supportive of new work organizations”.
First example: the four-day week. The barometer explains that one of the main reasons for opposition to this organization of working time lies in the fear of “less good coordination with the outside”. 41% of the business leaders surveyed share this opinion. Concern also arises from the prospect of not being able to cover all service hours (37%). In the hotel industry, 54% of bosses share this fear. This sector remains particularly marked by the difficulty of recruitment. Last April, Thierry Marx – president of the Union of Trades of the Hotel Industries – recalled in the morning show of Franceinfo that 200,000 positions remained to be filled.
The four-day week, “is a real economic and corporate culture choice”, explained in May for L’Express Benoît Serre, vice-president of the National Association of HR Directors. Although only 13% of the SME bosses surveyed have implemented the four-day week, the Ifop barometer identifies two characteristics to explain this corporate policy. 40% of the managers in favor of the four-day week are managers who identify ideologically with the left. 53% of the managers inclined to this way of working are under 35.
It is interesting to highlight the age criterion to explain the greater sympathy for a shorter work week. Adrien Ledoux, CEO of the recruitment platform JobTeaser, put forward a first hypothesis in the columns of L’Express. He stated: “If GenZ [NDLR : la génération Z, née après 1997] is very attached to work, she is much less so to the company.” Her position could be correlated with an element of the survey. According to 60% of the bosses positioning themselves in favor of the four-day week, the first benefit they point out for employees is “a better balance of life times”.
Teleworking, not adapted to the nature of VSEs?
Especially since teleworking has already contributed to desacralizing the image of the office. However, only 26% of the SME bosses surveyed have authorized teleworking, and among these, more than half of the companies concerned belong to the business services sector. The barometer makes the implacable observation of the impossibility of practicing teleworking in the “industry, construction, hotel and health and social action sectors”.
The report also highlights that 47% of companies that practice teleworking are located in Île-de-France. The other characteristic that makes teleworking more common is the size of the company. 34% of VSEs with between 10 and 19 employees have introduced working from home. In January 2022, the Association pour l’emploi des cadres pointed out that 72% of mid-sized companies – from 250 to 4,999 employees – and 44% of SMEs – less than 250 employees – were in favor of teleworking.
Like teleworking, the use of artificial intelligence does not stand out as a widespread practice, or even considered within VSEs. Only 28% of managers consider that artificial intelligence could have an impact on their work. Here again, the bosses of construction (11%), hotels (16%) and health and social action (16%) are among the least numerous to consider AI as “impacting their activities”.
Although 41% of managers are still using or will have to use artificial intelligence in their companies, only 10% are at the application or implementation stage, while 13% are at the reflection stage and 18% are at ground zero.