Elimination of the home office obligation: Employers welcome the new flexibility

Despite the increasing number of infections, looser corona requirements should apply in Germany’s companies in a week. Employers welcome more flexible rules and the elimination of home office requirements.

A week before the planned lifting of most of the nationwide corona requirements, the current spread of the virus is raising doubts about the operational easing – employers, however, welcome the abolition of the regulations.

The corresponding draft of an ordinance by the Federal Ministry of Labor provides that employers themselves should assess the risk of the virus and define appropriate measures in a company hygiene concept. According to the draft, employers should then check whether they offer employees a corona test per week, whether they provide protective masks and whether employees should work from home. In the future, companies should also decide for themselves on protective measures such as distance and hygiene rules or the obligation to wear a mask. The ordinance is to be passed in the federal cabinet on Wednesday.

“Flexibility necessary and useful”

Employers in Germany welcome the planned easing and promise to maintain protective measures: “The flexibility that is now planned for companies is necessary and makes sense,” said Employer President Rainer Dulger. The flexibilization is the necessary reaction to the operational protection concepts and the high vaccination rate of the employees.

How is the home office going? “Even after the legal 3G access regulation has been lifted and the obligation to work remotely no longer applies, the economy will continue to maintain effective protective measures,” announced Dulger.

The draft regulation contains the information that there is no legal obligation to work from home, but that employers have the option of offering their employees a home office. Dulger said that mobile work will continue to be used in companies without legal coercion. “It is therefore superfluous that the Federal Ministry of Labor, contrary to the decision of the Prime Minister and the Federal Chancellor, wants to anchor the home office again in part through the back door in the Occupational Health and Safety Ordinance,” he criticized.

DGB: Occupational safety is not a private matter

The German Trade Union Confederation (DGB) warns against neglecting protection against corona infections in the workplace. “Occupational safety must not become a private matter for employees from the end of March,” said DGB board member Anja Piel to the newspapers of the Funke media group. “The pandemic is not over yet, and that’s why home office, wherever possible, remains a useful tool to limit contacts and thus the risk of infection.”

At the same time, employees must continue to be protected at work in the company: by wearing masks indoors and closely monitoring the infection process through regular tests. “Employers would have to bear the costs for this,” said Piel.