PSA sticks to working from home after coronacrisis

As companies across Europe are slowly resuming their activities, some are also looking at what lessons can be learnt from practices put in place during the coronavirus lockdown. PSA, for one, is determined to implement working from home on a much larger scale.

The health benefits of working from home are clear, but the French carmaker also believes working from home should ensure a better work/life balance and less time lost during the commute, improve productivity and a reduced carbon footprint as fewer people on-site will lower energy use.

Under the new rules, work at the office will be limited to one day to one and a half days per week for activities not directly related to production, the other days being spent working from home.

Over the past few years, up to 18,000 PSA workers already worked from home occasionally. During the COVID-19 lockdown, that number went up to 38,000, requiring a significant IT upgrade. In an interview with the French Le Point, Xavier Chéreau, Director of Human Resources and Transformation of Groupe PSA, said this number could go up to 80,000 worldwide, on a total workforce of 200,000.

In the same interview, Mr Chéreau indicates it will be essential to ensure PSA does not lose its human touch. As the IT infrastructure has proved to cope well with the additional strain of a large workforce working from home, PSA will open up video conferencing more widely to allow more human interaction.

The new working from home measures should go into force this summer.

Image copyright: PSA