The legal obligation to work from home actually expired in March 2022. Despite this, many employers have allowed their employees to continue working from home. This also applies to the Bayerische Landesbank, which has now extended its home office agreement again. This was originally valid until the end of 2023, the new agreement will come into force on October 1st and will be valid at least until the end of 2025. It stipulates that home office and office work will continue to be treated equally – for an unlimited period. Theoretically, employees have the option of working from home five days a week, but it is desirable that they appear in the office on certain occasions. This includes team and project meetings as well as appointments with customers or supervisors. However, if the presence of an employee is required for one of these reasons, the bank must inform them in good time.
Such measures are intended to take the needs of employees into account. Because the demand for home office is still high even after the corona pandemic. At Bayern LB, the attendance rate is only 20 percent on Mondays and Fridays, and between 40 and 50 percent on the other days of the week.
The popularity of working from home among employees also proves one empirical study from the Technical University of Darmstadt from June 2023. It showed that employees working from home are happier and more productive. 62 percent of the more than 1000 respondents rated their work results better in the home office than in the office. 81 percent of those surveyed stated that they were satisfied with their job from home. For people who work in the office, this was only true for 57 percent. Andreas Pfnür, head of the department of real estate management and business administration, summarizes on the university’s website: “The study results clearly show that the employees understand remote work as a fundamental social gain that will no longer be negotiable for them in the future.”
Ironically, Zoom orders its employees back into the office
But there are also companies that ordered their employees back to the office after the Corona measures had expired. For example, Amazon, Apple or, ironically, the video conferencing platform Zoom have stipulated that their employees must at least partially return to the office. Google even came up with the idea of luring its employees back to the office with a special offer for the company’s guest house: For $99 a night, employees are to be accommodated in the hotel on Google’s campus near San Francisco. This is how you want to make the transition to the hybrid workplace easier for employees. The curious thing about it: According to the real estate platform Zillow, the average rent for an apartment in San Francisco is just under $3,600. Google employees could even save on rent by not working from home.
So while Bayern LB seems to have recognized the importance of modern home office rules, in parts of Silicon Valley an almost old-fashioned attitude to working from home sets the tone. The employees in the most innovative valley in the world are unlikely to like that.