End of the obligation to work from home: Many want to continue working at home

With the end of the obligation to work from home, working life normalizes again for many employees. Many have come to appreciate the home office, as a study shows.

Even after the obligation to work from home, which was introduced due to the corona pandemic, has expired, a large number of employees want to continue doing at least part of their work at work within their own four walls. In a representative study by the health insurance company DAK with 1,000 respondents in Hesse, 58 percent can imagine working from home half of the time in the future.

The questioning had taken place in February; At that time, more than half of the Hessian employees were in the home office during the second Corona wave. Before the pandemic, only a tenth of the employees in Hessen were in the home office several times a week. Their share had already more than quadrupled in the first corona wave: in April and May 2020, every second person was regularly working from home.

More productive and pleasant in the home office

According to the survey, many employees perceive the home office as more productive and more pleasant than the one in the office. For many employees, there is also no question that home office is feasible in many cases. 88 percent of the men and women questioned stated in the survey that suitable tasks could be done just as well in the home office as in the workplace in the company.

The absence of commuting to work was assessed positively by 79 percent of those surveyed. 70 percent stated that tasks could be distributed more specifically throughout the day, while 86 percent emphasized a better work-life balance. However, 39 percent of employees with children under eighteen said they were often distracted.

Employers relieved, unions worried

Shortly before the expiry of the obligation to work from home, employer and employee representatives expressed themselves differently. The duty was “bureaucratic actionism” and unnecessary political interference, said the chief executive of the Confederation of German Employers’ Associations, Steffen Kampeter, to the dpa news agency. In the past few months, the companies have made it possible to work from home independently, voluntarily and very reliably in all industries. “We employers have delivered in the home office, and we will continue to do so where internal and external business processes allow. We do not need a regulation for this.”

The unions had welcomed the introduction of the home office requirement during the pandemic. For the time after the expiry of the regulation, the head of the German Trade Union Federation (DGB), Reiner Hoffmann, calls for permanent regulation in this area. A legislative package is expected from the next federal government, said Hoffmann. Many employees wanted a healthy mix of face-to-face work and the possibility of being able to work on the move in the future. This healthy mix, however, included clear rules of the game with which “excessive working hours and unpaid overtime” had to be ruled out.