As of: 25.06.2021 2:28 p.m.
The home office requirement expires at the end of June. Nevertheless, many companies want their employees to continue working from home. Corona has radically changed the world of work within a very short time.
A double espresso in the living room on the sofa, a laptop and off you go. It is 9 a.m. and Frédéric Schäfer is logging into the first video conference of the day. This is called team check-in in industry jargon.
The 37-year-old is Senior Digital Media Consultant at the Frankfurt agency Vier for Texas. Since the corona lockdown, home office has been part of his everyday life. First in New York, then in Hong Kong, and for the last six weeks in Frankfurt am Main. “It’s okay with me. You can tell what’s going on. But actually I miss the office atmosphere, the exchange with colleagues. Creative people just need direct contact,” he says.
The agency quickly turned what was born of necessity into a virtue. “When the pandemic broke out, all 50 colleagues were in the home office in a few days. We brought the computers home in taxis, the data came with portable hard drives, the first licenses were bought – for the video conferences,” explains Managing Director Björn Eckerl. “Now there is the agency at 50 locations across Germany.”
Even after the home office is compulsory, working from home remains an option
Peter Gerhardt, HR, Daily Topics 9.45 p.m., June 25, 2021
Home office is accepted
The switch to working from home at the Alte Leipziger insurance company took place in a very similar way. At the headquarters in Oberursel, IT was initially the main challenge. In the meantime, 90 percent of the more than 3000 employees nationwide are technically capable of working from home. 75 percent are currently doing this on average. “For the vast majority of employees, working from home was a completely new situation,” explains press spokesman Andreas Bernhardt. “But it quickly found acceptance because everyone understood that protection against infection required it.”
This coincides with a study by the Institute for Employment Research in Nuremberg. Accordingly, the desire for more work from home even increased in the corona pandemic. The vast majority (61 percent) of those surveyed who work in the home office perceive this type of work as helpful and less stressful. For twelve percent, working from home is neither helpful nor stressful. Eight percent see it as helpful but also stressful. The remaining 18 percent see working at home as negative.
Voluntary renewal
Young people with a digital affinity for the digital world really appreciate the offer to stay at home, according to the Alte Leipziger insurance company. Especially those with small children, for whom schools and daycare centers were closed or in emergency operation. In an in-house survey, 78 percent said that working from home allows them to combine work and private life well.
The company has therefore decided to enable the home office even after the legal regulation expires on June 30th. Provided the technical requirements are met and the job permits, employees can work from home until the end of September in coordination with their superiors. However, there will be mandatory attendance appointments again. “We are already assuming that many of our colleagues will be coming back to the office more often in the near future,” said press spokesman Bernhardt. Because many employees are now fully vaccinated.
Alternatives possible
At the agency Vier for Texas you first had to familiarize yourself intensively with the “New Work” way of working. Even though that worked out well, managing director Eckerl favors a hybrid form in the future. “We decided on a hybrid model,” he says. The employees should come to the office from Monday morning to Wednesday noon. After that, everyone is free to work “remotely”. The agency hopes to avoid frictional losses and ambiguities, according to the motto: Is XY actually there today or not?
A version of the home office that suits Frédéric Schäfer. “We’re really happy when we can all get back together again,” says the consultant, who at the moment often sits in front of the computer until 7 p.m. or longer and switches from one video conference to the next. But he is even more looking forward to meeting people again after work, if Corona allows it. In real life, after work – whether after the home office or everyday office life.