“You have 7,564 unread messages across 24 channels. » It’s Monday morning, and like many office workers, you’re receiving this automated email from the Slack virtual workspace your company has installed to streamline interactions.

As the week slowly begins, take a look at Trello and Notion, two applications for organizing your To do list (“To-Do List”) that your company strongly encourages you to use. You then open the in-house software to reserve a meeting room and then use the Teams video conferencing tool to organize it remotely with your teleworking colleagues.

Since you yourself telework two days out of five, you also have an application at your disposal to find out whether you want to stay at home or come to the office the next day and whether you need a common room or a room in the office . quiet. In a sign that employees are increasingly in demand, companies are even offering them the use of workplace well-being feedback applications, such as: B. Moodwork or Zest.

This example is not (completely) made up. Since the Covid-19 pandemic and the emergence of hybrid working methods in French companies, employees have adopted numerous new solutions so-called “productivity” tools, most of which were still unknown to the general public. Google’s digital workspace has been adopted by 10 million companies worldwide and Slack now has 200,000 customers, including 32 CAC 40 companies.

Some tools promise to let managers manage their teams remotely or in the office via text or video. Alan Mutual, a former start-up now with more than 500 employees, has made writing the heart of its exchanges, particularly through Slack and Notion. “Writing enables all data to be traced so that everyone has access to information”explains human resources manager Paul Sauveplane.

Stress and distance from the core business

“Initially, these tools are described as “collaborative,” but there may be variations, notes Caroline Diard, associate professor of human resources management at Toulouse Business School. The employer can control their employees by knowing who is connected. There has been an increase in inquiries on the employee side. And because the tools are immediately available, the employee is forced to react quickly. »

There has been little work on this topic in France, but one worker did, according to an analysis by the software RescueTime of data from 50,000 American knowledge workers (editors, developers, project managers) in 2018 checked his communications devices every six minutes.

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