The corona pandemic has made the home office socially acceptable. Hybrid working is no longer a benefit, but the standard. Anyone who doesn’t understand this will find it difficult in the future to attract talented specialists. A comment.
It took a global pandemic to prove that flexible working environments offer numerous advantages and that employees working from home are sometimes even more productive than in the office. But now that the pandemic is over, more and more employers are forcing their workforce to return to the office.
Anyone who only thinks of some long-established traditional company in which one could perhaps still blame it on deadlocked structures and an outdated mindset is wrong: recently it was tech giants like Amazon and Apple who made the headlines by obliging their employees to do this to spend at least three days a week in the office.
This is problematic for a number of reasons.
The office constraint is no longer up-to-date
First of all, the home office has led to a better work-life balance in many cases. The ability to work flexibly and spend less time on the road has allowed workers to spend more time with family and make better use of their free time. For many people, a return to the office means a return to long commutes, stressful morning routines and less time for personal interests. Additionally, being forced to return to the office could negatively impact job satisfaction and motivation, which could ultimately affect productivity.
Additionally, reducing commuting during the pandemic has had a positive impact on the environment. Fewer cars on the streets and less energy use in office buildings have helped lower carbon emissions and reduced the environmental footprint of many businesses. A return to the traditional working model would reverse this progress. Companies should therefore be aware of their responsibility for the environment and promote sustainable work practices.
Employer branding should also not be underestimated. If you keep flexible home office solutions, you can not only retain talent better, but also attract new ones. Many employees have come to appreciate the advantages of working from home and are now looking for companies that offer flexible working conditions. Companies that do not offer their employees such options are finding it increasingly difficult to attract and retain qualified specialists.
The magic formula is “hybrid work”
After all, as current figures show, office occupancy in Germany was around 21 percent at the beginning of 2023. If you consider that before the pandemic began, this value was sometimes over 50 percent, at least some companies seem to have changed their minds. It is now important that this mindset solidifies and that you don’t fall back into old patterns.
What is often misunderstood in this context: It’s not about getting rid of the office completely. On the contrary: the office also plays an important role in the New York era. Rather, it is about letting employees decide how many days they want to work in the home office and how many in the office. The extremes, namely that someone wants to work 100 percent in the home office or 100 percent in the office, are rarely encountered.
Hybrid working is the order of the day – and for this it is important that digital tools and technologies support collaboration effectively. Video conferencing, joint document editing and other online tools nowadays make it possible to work together productively despite physical distance. They just have to be implemented correctly.
All in all, the mixture of office presence and home office is the ideal solution for many companies and their employees to combine the positive aspects of both working environments. In this way, employees could continue to benefit from flexibility and a better work-life balance, while companies work more sustainably and use the potential of digital technologies. Anyone who refuses to do so will no longer have a chance on the personnel market in the medium term.