According to a study, a large majority of companies in Germany want to continue offering home office in the future. Only four percent want to completely abolish working from home according to a survey published on Tuesday by the Munich-based Ifo Institute. Twelve percent are planning stricter regulations. Three out of four companies that allow home office, however, want to keep it unchanged.
“These results refute the notion that the trend is back to the office”said Ifo researcher Jean-Victor Alipour. “The public reporting focuses on individual companies in which home office is to be scaled back,” he added. “This exaggerates the actual development.” Eleven percent of companies even want to make their rules more flexible.
In 79 percent of companies, working from home is basically feasible. This is much more common in large companies (93 percent) than in small and medium-sized businesses (75 percent). There are also differences between the individual economic sectors: while 82 percent of service providers and 89 percent of industrial companies can offer home office options, this only applies to 40 percent of construction and trading companies. Across all sectors, only a minority want to limit or eliminate working from home.
“It is undisputed that on-site work is superior to home office in some aspects”said Ifo expert Alipour. “Stricter rules through stronger coordination of shared presence times can make home offices more productive overall.”
Thirteen percent of service providers and eight percent of industrial companies are planning more flexible home office arrangements. “Home office is and will remain firmly anchored in Germany,” concludes Alipour. “The clocks are not turning back to 2019.” Due to the Corona pandemic that followed, home working has become firmly established in many companies. (Reuters)