The obligation to work from home ends: the future will be hybrid

The home office obligation ends today. A survey of DAX companies shows that the traditional five-day week in the office will not return for the time being. In the future, many will prefer a hybrid model.

Even after the end of the obligation to work from home, many office workplaces will remain empty – at least for the time being. Because many employees will continue to work from home. Most companies understand this. However, employers do not want to forego presence entirely. A survey by tagesschau.de among ten DAX companies shows that flexible and hybrid work models, i.e. a combination of home office and attendance times in the office, will determine working life in the future.

“There is no going back to the old world. The future of our work is hybrid. We want to combine the advantages of the office and those of mobile work in the best possible way. We also expect that we will travel less and work together in a more agile manner in the interests of the new way of working.” , answers the Deutsche Telekom when asked how it imagines the working world after the end of the pandemic-related restrictions. The detergent group Henkel also advocates a “flexible working model based on a balance between mobile working and presence at the workplace”.

Work at home two days a week

In fact, most of them speak of tagesschau.de surveyed DAX companies for such a hybrid model. In the future, Deutsche Bank wants to enable its employees to work from home two days a week on a voluntary basis, as bank manager Christian Sewing and HR manager Michael Ilgner explain in an internal memo. However, the office should always remain the first option. The aim of the new model is to find the right balance between working in the company and working from home.

The chemical company BASF is even more flexible. “Whether and how mobile work can be done is discussed by employees and managers, taking into account the operational conditions. This also includes the number of days that employees will be in the plant,” writes the company at the request of tagesschau.de. There shouldn’t be a rigid set of rules, because not all activities at BASF are suitable for mobile working. The company points out that a test in the laboratory or the operation and repair of a system cannot be carried out virtually from home.

Presence promotes innovation and creativity

At BMW, after the pandemic, employees should also “use the possibilities of digitization, mobile work from home or on the move” without having to forego personal exchange and on-site encounters at the workplace. A uniform regulation for such a hybrid solution could not exist because of the different work areas. At Volkswagen, people seem to think less about the future work model. Until further notice, “the maximum use of mobile work” applies, according to the group. Around 55,000 employees use this rule at their peak.

But it doesn’t work completely without a presence in the offices. According to a study by the Fraunhofer Institute, disillusionment has spread among many employees who have been working from home for over a year: They no longer feel as creative and less well informed as they did when they were working on the company’s premises.

Many employers share this concern. The insurance group Allianz emphasizes how important the work on site remains. “We are convinced that innovations, the creativity of the teams and a sense of togetherness develop most strongly on site. Our goal must be to combine the best of both worlds – mobile working and the Allianz office world”, so the company at the request of tagesschau.de.

Henkel is also convinced that, in addition to mobile work, “the on-site workplace will play an important role even after the pandemic, as a place of inspiration, creativity, innovation, encounter and collaboration. And as a place where employees share culture can / experience from Henkel. ”

Companies create more meeting areas

In order to lure employees out of the home office, the companies want to redesign their offices. “We will reduce office space and redesign it as meeting places for exchange and to promote creativity,” says Telekom. The other DAX companies also want to modernize their locations and create new meeting places. Even Munich Re, which tends to be reluctant when it comes to public relations, says it has started an internal project in which “new ways of working together” are being considered. “This also includes any renovation work.”

The companies cannot currently predict how many of their employees will be working in the office again in autumn or perhaps even have to go back to the home office. This depends on the infection process and cannot be foreseen now, explains Munich Re. The companies also want to evaluate the experiences from the pandemic in the summer and examine what hybrid work can look like in practice.

Exception SAP

The software giant SAP does not want to have anything to do with such considerations. In the future, the company will give its employees complete freedom when they work from home, on the go or in the office. “We want to give our employees the choice,” said board member Julia White. In an email sent to around 100,000 employees in mid-June, the board promised a “100 percent flexible and trust-based workplace as the norm, not the exception”. In an employee survey, 94 percent of employees spoke out in favor of this path, according to the board of directors. White also sees a business opportunity in making work more flexible. Should customers want to follow suit, SAP has the “technology to help them”.

Meanwhile, the Federal Ministry of Labor wants to adapt the Occupational Safety and Health Ordinance. Then the area, distance and mask specifications for the workplace are to be adapted and extended. The obligation of companies to offer their employees in companies a corona test twice a week is to remain in place for the time being.