Economy Mobile work
Every tenth person in this country would like to no longer have to come to the office at all
As of: 7:01 p.m. | Reading time: 4 minutes
By Felix Seifert, Dan Honigstein
Even after the corona pandemic, many Germans would like to work from home
Quelle: Getty Images/Westend61
Being able to work from home remains in great demand among employees even after Corona. Two thirds want a mix of home office and office work. Experts consider an open offer from companies to be essential – otherwise they would have no chance on the market.
Meeting colleagues via video conference, taking a lunch break in the kitchen with the family, sometimes doing work with the laptop from the garden – for many people this has become a normal part of everyday work.
According to surveys by the Ifo Institute for Economic Research, more companies are still offering home office regulations after Corona than before the pandemic began. But not all companies like working from home, as a representative study by the real estate service provider CBRE shows.
The study is based on 1,080 people of all ages from Germany who were interviewed by CBRE about the situation at their workplace. Responses on the topic of “office” were only taken into account if the respondents stated that they also work there. This was the case for 60 percent of the participants.
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But there is apparently skepticism in the companies when it comes to working from home. Statistics show that many companies are not yet able to meet the desire for more flexible workplace design. According to the survey, 65 percent of employees would like a mixture of working from home and working in the office, but 39 percent would still have to drive to the company every day.
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At 26 percent, an above-average number of employees in Germany would like to work purely in the office – in an international comparison, the figure is only 20 percent. However, ten percent in Germany would also like not to have to come to the office at all.
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The desire to work from home is significantly greater in Germany than the companies are currently responding to. The importance of working from home is also increasing for employers, says Dirk Neumann, head of the department for work design and qualification policy on the IG Metall board. Firms could disqualify potential new employees by deciding not to work from home.
“The ability to do at least part of the work from home can play an important role in the decision for or against an employer,” says Neumann. For many office workers, mobile work is an opportunity for a better work-life balance and an increase in flexibility. In addition, there are savings in commuting times between home and work.
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So do companies have to make improvements? In part, says Christian Schwolow from Deutsche Telekom. “Anyone who cannot offer attractive working models such as working from home will hardly have a chance in the highly competitive talent market,” says Schwolow.
Nevertheless, the office is still an integral part of the modern working world. “Home office has come and will remain. But that doesn’t mean the office is dead. It just has to reinvent itself,” says Schwolow. It is important for companies to see office space as a “place of interaction”. “The focus is increasingly being placed on premises that promote teamwork,” says the Telekom spokesman.
This is also reflected in the CBRE study. 36 percent of those surveyed said they wanted to avoid commuting by working from home. However, at least 31 percent of those surveyed said they see social interaction as an incentive to drive to the office.
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And what about productivity if working models remain flexible in the future? In a recent survey by chat provider Slack, the majority of respondents said they felt more productive when working from home. Around 69 percent said that remote work would increase their productivity “a little” or “a lot”.
In what form the perceived improvement is actually reflected is unclear, says labor market expert Ulf Rinne. “How productively it is possible to work from home is actually a very exciting scientific question, because there is no clear answer,” says Rinne.
According to a home office survey by the German Federation of Trade Unions from 2022, the truth is that, from the point of view of many employees, these advantages would come at the price of constant availability, shorter breaks and longer working hours. Almost half of those who regularly work at the mobile workplace stated, for example, that they were no longer able to properly switch off from work even outside of office hours.
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