2024-08-20 19:13:26
Home office has become firmly established in the German working world. Only a fraction of companies want to abolish the regulations. In some cases, they should become even more flexible.
According to a study, a large majority of companies in Germany want to continue to offer home office in the future. Only four percent want to completely abolish working from home, according to a survey published on Tuesday by the Munich-based Ifo Institute. Twelve percent are planning stricter regulations. Three out of four companies where home office is possible, however, want to keep it unchanged.
“These results refute the view that the trend is going back to the office,” said Ifo researcher Jean-Victor Alipour. “Public reporting focuses on individual companies where home office is to be scaled back,” he added. “This exaggerates the actual development.” Eleven percent of companies even want to make their rules more flexible.
Working from home is basically possible in 79 percent of companies. This is much more common in large companies (93 percent) than in small and medium-sized businesses (75 percent). There are also differences between the individual economic sectors: while 82 percent of service providers and 89 percent of industrial companies can offer home offices, this only applies to 40 percent of construction and trading companies. Across all sectors, only a minority want to limit or abolish working from home.
“It is undisputed that on-site work is superior to home office in some aspects,” said Ifo expert Alipour. “Stricter rules through greater coordination of shared presence times can make home office more productive overall.”
Thirteen percent of service providers and eight percent of industrial companies are planning more flexible home office arrangements. “Home office is and will remain firmly anchored in Germany,” concludes Alipour. “The clocks are not turning back to 2019.” Due to the Corona pandemic that followed, home working has become firmly established in many companies.