How do companies view home offices at the beginning of 2021?
Posted: Mon Jan 06, 2025 3:37 am
It has long been a truism that Corona has increased the trend towards working from home. Will office workers only work at their kitchen table in the future? Not at all, say experts: They need social interaction in the office at least occasionally. On the other hand, by having many employees work from home for longer periods of time, offices can be efficiently reduced in size, which reduces costs for companies. So from now on there will be both an office at the employer's place and a home office: a hybrid working world is emerging. This is part of the #NewWorkNow blog parade .
Reading tip: Scientific studies!
After a year of the Corona crisis, the Munich-based Ifo Institute surveyed almost wholesale email list 800 HR managers about their opinion on home offices and hybrid working. 73% of them believe that a megatrend has begun that they want to be part of. Even after Corona, they want their employees to work partly in the company and partly at home. This attitude is due to the fact that most employees have adapted to home offices relatively quickly and well. Technology allows this anyway, because companies manage their data primarily in a collaborative cloud in which several employees can work in a database at the same time. As a result, productivity did not decrease as a result of home offices. Teams and their managers were available at all times, but the latter had to establish new management mechanisms. How, when, for how long and in what outfit a video conference is held, whether employees have to be available at all times via desktop chat and how to deal with email, messenger and telephone - all of this had to be established anew. But it works. Now the question is whether home offices have become the "new normal". Experts doubt this. Apart from the fact that most of the value creation cannot be shifted to the home office.
office workers also complain about some of the disadvantages of working from home. We humans are highly social and are most creative when we interact face to face. This can only be replaced to a limited extent by digital communication. In addition to the isolation at the kitchen table, many employees working from home also struggle with the lack of separation between work and leisure time. Parents who have to homeschool their children in addition to working from home suffer the most. Last but not least, employees are burdened by the lack of direct feedback: an encouraging smile in everyday office life is still more motivating than a smiley on the screen. That will probably never change. People want to feel like they belong to a team, they want to discuss things and occasionally have a coffee together. Ergo, no one is seriously aiming for a permanent, exclusive home office. The future is more likely to be hybrid. Some office work takes place in the home office, the other among people in the company office.
Reading tip: Scientific studies!
After a year of the Corona crisis, the Munich-based Ifo Institute surveyed almost wholesale email list 800 HR managers about their opinion on home offices and hybrid working. 73% of them believe that a megatrend has begun that they want to be part of. Even after Corona, they want their employees to work partly in the company and partly at home. This attitude is due to the fact that most employees have adapted to home offices relatively quickly and well. Technology allows this anyway, because companies manage their data primarily in a collaborative cloud in which several employees can work in a database at the same time. As a result, productivity did not decrease as a result of home offices. Teams and their managers were available at all times, but the latter had to establish new management mechanisms. How, when, for how long and in what outfit a video conference is held, whether employees have to be available at all times via desktop chat and how to deal with email, messenger and telephone - all of this had to be established anew. But it works. Now the question is whether home offices have become the "new normal". Experts doubt this. Apart from the fact that most of the value creation cannot be shifted to the home office.
office workers also complain about some of the disadvantages of working from home. We humans are highly social and are most creative when we interact face to face. This can only be replaced to a limited extent by digital communication. In addition to the isolation at the kitchen table, many employees working from home also struggle with the lack of separation between work and leisure time. Parents who have to homeschool their children in addition to working from home suffer the most. Last but not least, employees are burdened by the lack of direct feedback: an encouraging smile in everyday office life is still more motivating than a smiley on the screen. That will probably never change. People want to feel like they belong to a team, they want to discuss things and occasionally have a coffee together. Ergo, no one is seriously aiming for a permanent, exclusive home office. The future is more likely to be hybrid. Some office work takes place in the home office, the other among people in the company office.