06/2020 – « Pros and cons of the home office »

Corona provides us with all sorts of new approaches – whether they can be maintained in the post-Corona era…here is a collection of arguments for or against it.

Without doubt, the home office is an ideal emergency solution and – to calm the German soul: the European neighbours have also discovered the home office.

However, the prerequisites for the home office are that technical requirements must be met, new incentive systems for employees must be defined, and employee motivation is not possible in the traditional form. Above all, reporting must be redefined, so that the question arises, is the home office workplace identical to the office office workplace?

The Home Office Employee mentions a number of relevant advantages, such as the fact that he or she prefers to work from home and, in particular, the saving of travel time to and from work.

Last but not least, the work-life balance is right, but recent experiences have shown that home office employees feel neglected, lonely, have little or no contact with colleagues and lack feedback on their performance.

This leads to the question: not every employee is or wants to be an efficient home office worker.

On the Management Side , there are also arguments for and against this:

With the introduction of the home office, there is less politicization all of a sudden and the work steps have to be divided up more in order to maintain a certain amount of control.

Also – over time – managers become frustrated because they cannot give direct / personal feedback to the employees, so that the leadership of the employees must be different.

The solution could be for the home office employee to come to the workplace once a week to ensure personal communication.

The demand for home office sounds simple and straightforward, but it is complicated in its implementation and depends on workplace to workplace or from employee to employee.

June 2020