When Siemens, in the middle of the corona pandemic, regulated what everyone was already doing by then, the company was considered a pioneer: mobile working as a permanent offer even after the pandemic, two to three days a week with the computer at home, in a café, in the forest or on a mountain pasture – it doesn’t really matter, the main thing is that you can be reached. Project name: “Mobile Working in the New Normal.” Now one can certainly discuss whether we are already living in the post-Covid era (probably not), but at Siemens they are already discussing the consequences of this new normal.
And so it came about that Siemens supervisory board member Jürgen Kerner from IG Metall and the deputy supervisory board chairwoman and head of the works council, Birgit Steinborn, actually invited journalists to once again say something fundamental about the company strategy. That now there must be an end to splits and spin-offs, that Siemens shouldn’t become a pure software company, after all, there is also the history as an industrial company. Things that you can expect from employee representatives.
The “New Normal”: Less office space, fewer jobs in the canteen
But then it was about: the new normal. Two to three days of home office a week, that sounds great at first, said Birgit Steinborn. Problem: This “New Normal” is unfortunately only practicable in the offices. But what about the service people, what about the people in the factory who produce? Everything is still available at Siemens. You have to be careful that there is no “split” here. And because something like this is currently being debated in many companies: working from home should not lead to a large “space-saving program”. More home office, fewer office jobs, no matter what happens at the end of the pandemic (always assuming there is an end)? A number of jobs are already being cut in the Siemens canteen – a signal that shows where things are headed. And then there’s the matter of the old role models: men are coming back to the office more often, women are staying at home more often. “They want to combine work and career,” says Steinborn. And the way she puts it, she’s not very convinced of this agreement model.