Insee Analyses · May 2026 · n° 120

Working from home increased productivity in companies that have continued to allow it following the Covid-19 crisis

Since the health crisis, teleworking has become firmly established in companies in France. The primary work arrangement has been a hybrid one, often consisting in a combination of two days of teleworking and three days of on‑site work. For non‑financial companies excluding real estate, teleworking was associated with a modest but tangible improvement in labour productivity: a 10 percentage points increase in the share of teleworkers was correlated with a 0.7 to 1.0 percentage points gain in productivity growth between 2019 and 2022.

The effect was clearly apparent in some companies: those that rented, before the Covid‑19 pandemic, office space separate from other production premises made greater use of teleworking in 2022, with 36% of employees teleworking on average, compared with 10% for the others. This premises configuration may therefore have facilitated the reorganisation of work after the health crisis. For these companies, a 10 percentage points increase in the share of teleworkers led to a 2.7 percentage points improvement in productivity growth from 2019 to 2022.

This increase in productivity due to teleworking was only partly explained by a reduction in rented office space and by investment in IT equipment. It may therefore also have reflected, among these companies, a production process more conducive to teleworking.

At the macroeconomic level, these positive effects may have been offset by negative externalities on activities such as commercial real estate.