After two years of the pandemic, many workers are quitting work again home office. A third of office workers in Germany according to a study, has to work completely from the office again. And this despite the fact that the majority of executives are willing to give employees more flexibility, shows a study published on Monday by pollsters Yougov on behalf of the tech company Slack.
77 percent of the executives surveyed stated that they let their employees work from anywhere as long as they perform their usual work. 33 percent are not willing to do so. Of those executives who dislike working from anywhere, one in three gave the reason they were concerned about lack of control over employees.
The concern is also evident in large tech companies: Tesla boss Elon Musk threatened his employees with being kicked out if they didn’t return to the office from their home office. “Everyone at Tesla needs to be in the office at least 40 hours a week or they can leave Tesla,” he wrote in an email to his executives in late May that later surfaced on social media. at Facebook, Google and Apple there is a similar tone. Apple CEO Tim Cook ordered his employees back to the office in March. The company’s huge ring-shaped office complex in Cupertino, California, with jobs for more than 12,000 people, has been almost empty since the outbreak of the pandemic. The building is said to have cost more than five billion dollars.
No right to home office
At the same time, there is a great desire for more flexibility in the workplace on the part of employees – many want to continue working from home. The study also shows that. Employees only have the right to work from home if this has been contractually agreed beforehand. Otherwise, they have to follow the wishes of the top management to come back to the office.
This also makes the concept of “workation” more difficult, which describes working from a holiday location. According to the study, many employees supported this type of work. Almost half of all office workers surveyed said they would like to work from a desk in Tuscany, a mountain hut or on the beach for some time. 13 percent have used this opportunity so far and drew a positive balance: 68 percent of those surveyed who have already worked from a holiday location would do so again. According to the information, only 15 percent have permission to do so so far.
But in the past two years, despite the desire for more freedom, according to the study, only a few office workers have taken advantage of the opportunity for local flexibility. 73 percent of those surveyed said they had not worked outside of the office or home. Only 13 percent moved their home office to friends or family. Seven percent worked from a holiday location. For executives, it was 14 percent.