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- To foster a better work-life balance, large French companies have widely embraced the issue of remote working. Between 2020 and 2026, the 223 companies in our panel signed 326 agreements and amendments on the subject.
- In the context that emerged with the Covid-19 pandemic, they proved increasingly generous, offering an average of up to 2.3 days of remote working in 2023. The years 2024 and 2025 marked a turning point, with a gradual decline in the weekly allowance.
- This movement has been amplified by the choice of certain employers to reduce the allotted time allowances.
In France, hybrid working has become a lasting fixture within organisations, following its forced popularisation due to Covid-19 lockdowns. In 2024, it concerned 27% of employees, above the European average (24%) according to Eurofound. A study dedicated to remote working published in March 2026 by the Association pour l’emploi des cadres (Apec) suggests that remote working is widely popular among both those who benefit from it and their employers: for managerial staff, who are the most affected, the freedom to choose their work organisation is the second most cited advantage of the status, ahead of pay; large companies also recognise its value for productivity (61%) and quality of life at work (87%). In an agreement signed in December 2024, Safran Aircraft Engines stated, for example, that “remote working has a positive impact on the balance between professional and personal life and promotes a better quality of life and well-being at work” for its employees.
Yet examples of organisations rolling back their policies have multiplied in recent months, following an initial global movement initiated in 2023 by Amazon, Lyft, Apple, Meta, Starbucks, Google and Disney. In France, Société Générale dramatically reversed its policy in June 2025 by terminating the agreement in force to unilaterally reduce the allowance from three days a week to one day. The change has been effective since early October 2026. Massively implemented and incorporated into dedicated agreements in the wake of Covid-19, remote working nonetheless remained a prominent topic of collective bargaining in 2025, with Groupe Alpha recording only 5% fewer texts compared with the previous year (918 across all companies, of all sizes; the study is not yet public).
Datajournalisme, économie et numérique. J’enseigne aussi le journalisme de données à l’EDJ de Sciences Po Paris.