Kirchheim is a community of long distances, at least when it comes to using a service from the town hall administration. If you want to pick up lost keys, you have to go to the lost-and-found office in the town hall, but building applications must be submitted to the branch on Glockenblumenstraße, and anyone with questions about garbage disposal can inquire in the offices on Räterstraße. The municipal administration is spread over six locations. Yet. Because at the beginning of next year, the employees will be brought together at the new location in the local park, which is still under construction between the parishes of Kirchheim and Heimstetten.
In the coming year, the new Kirchheim town hall will be completed – every employee will have their own new workplace there.
(Photo: Municipality of Kirchheim/oh)
According to Mayor Maximilian Böltl (CSU), every employee will then have their own new workplace in the ultra-modern town hall. Unlike possibly soon in the state capital. There, the green-red city council coalition plans to cut every sixth office job. This should save several million euros in rental costs every year.
This request was also behind the relocation of large parts of the staff of the Munich district office to the new location in the trade fair city of Riem, which the district of Munich acquired for around 100 million euros. Before moving in, the employees were spread across a total of eight locations in Munich and the vehicle registration office in the Neukeferloh district of Grasbrunn. Gradually, however, the district office is dismantling most of the branches, only the district office at Mariahilfplatz in der Au, the registration office in Neukeferloh and the new branch in Riem remain. In this way, the district wants to save around three million euros a year in rental costs.
At the new location of the district office in Messestadt Riem, desk sharing is practiced, employees share workplaces there.
(Photo: Claus Schunk)
But the number of jobs has also been reduced due to the trend towards home offices and mobile working. In Riem, for example, desk sharing is now practiced, numerous employees no longer have a permanent workplace and have to book a desk before starting work. Haar’s Mayor Andreas Bukowski (CSU), on the other hand, rejects this type of work organization in his administration. “Everyone has their permanent job here, and it should stay that way,” says the head of the town hall. “We don’t want to reduce the places like in large corporations.” However, his administration is also in a comfortable situation, since the town hall has only recently been expanded and offers more space.
Haar’s Mayor Andreas Bukowski supports home office in his administration.
(Photo: Angelika Bardehle)
Nevertheless, Corona has also left its mark in the town hall of Haar, and the trend is also towards working from home. “But we handle this very flexibly. That is decided by the respective manager with the employee,” says Bukowski. But there are also certain areas in which work cannot be carried out at home: for example in the registration office and wherever services are offered directly.
This credo also applies to the Sauerlach town hall – but for a different reason: in the spring of 2021, the old town hall burned down completely, which also housed parts of the administration, such as the registry office. And so all employees had to be housed in the new town hall on Bahnhofstrasse. “Since then we no longer have a meeting room, no meeting rooms, we have converted everything that is possible into offices,” says Mayor Barbara Bogner (UBV). “It’s all very cramped.” So densely packed that the community was not even able to hire an apprentice that year.
And so Sauerlach’s mayor also welcomes the trend towards working from home. However, the employees in Sauerlach have to get permission to work from home. “I think that’s fine, as long as you can still see the employees,” says Bogner. “I don’t want to do everything about video conferencing with the iPad.” Kirchheim’s mayor, Böltl, thinks it is particularly important that the town hall is always there for the citizens: “People have to meet people. There are also problems that you have to identify in personal conversations.”
Unterhaching offers so-called flexi days to its city hall employees
At the same time, public administrations must also reflect changing working environments and remain attractive for employees – and this also includes the possibility of working from home. “But you have to look at it for each area,” says Böltl. “Example of the building authority: When it comes to project organization and construction projects, I can work on it in peace and quiet from home. But it may also be necessary for the same employee to be on site when building construction is involved.”
In Unterhaching there has been talk of relocation plans for city hall employees to the Stumpfwiese in recent months. The former Sportscheck building was for sale there, and Mayor Wolfgang Panzer (SPD) is said to have toyed with it. In the meantime, however, the municipality no longer has any money to rent or buy additional rooms there, and City Hall spokesman Simon Hötzl accordingly denies the plans: “The sports check was never an option for the City Hall.” Rather, opportunities for additional childcare, the music school and adult education center should be created there.
Flexi days in the Unterhaching town hall.
(Photo: Angelika Bardehle)
There is no longer any talk of a lack of space in City Hall. Since the faction rooms were moved to the children’s home on Oberweg and the small meeting room was converted into offices, all employees have been accommodated comfortably. Nothing has to be rented or bought. Hötzl also refers to a home office rule that was agreed before the start of the corona pandemic in early 2020. Accordingly, there are so-called flexi days for employees on which they do not have to work in the office. They should spend 40 percent of their working hours in the town hall. According to Hötzl, the offer is popular and should remain so after Corona.