The clearest appeal came just a few days ago, it came from Telekom boss Timotheus Höttges: "Come back to the offices," he asked his employees in a newspaper interview.

Höttges complained that the vitality in the Bonn group headquarters had been lost due to the trend towards working from home.

The personal conversation and creativity fell by the wayside.

Britta Beeger

Editor in business and responsible for "The Lounge".

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Dietrich Creutzburg

Business correspondent in Berlin.

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Little is likely to change in the coming months.

Because on October 1st, companies in Germany are to be obliged again due to the pandemic to offer home offices for all employees whose tasks allow this.

This is provided for in a draft by the Federal Ministry of Labor for a new Corona Occupational Safety and Health Ordinance.

Unlike in spring 2021 and last winter, employees are not obliged to accept the offer - anyone who wants to continue working in the office can do so.

But the efforts of companies to get their employees to work more regularly in the office are being slowed down for the time being.

The reactions from the economy on Thursday were correspondingly negative.

Employer President Rainer Dulger described the plans of Federal Labor Minister Hubertus Heil (SPD) as "inappropriate and incomprehensible".

He criticized that the same infection protection measures would apply in the companies as at the peak of the pandemic, regardless of the specific infection situation.

Vaccination successes, survived infections and milder courses of the disease would have to be taken into account, however.

"It's time to leave the panic corner and get back to normal with Corona," said Dulger.

"Overzealous Legislator"

The family entrepreneurs complained that Minister of Labor Heil was “assuming a pandemic situation that is not yet foreseeable”.

Association President Reinhold von Eben-Worlée asked: "How can he time the necessity so precisely, while other measures are linked to the actual course of the pandemic?" Instead of burdening companies with a high degree of bureaucracy unnecessarily, the government should trust in their personal responsibility.

In the third year of the pandemic, companies are "sufficiently sensitized" to act responsibly and wisely if the pandemic situation becomes difficult again.

"There is no need for overzealous legislators for this," emphasized von Eben-Worlée.

The Federal Association of Liberal Professions, which includes doctors, pharmacists, lawyers, tax consultants and auditors, also referred to the limits in everyday professional life.

Home office is “not practicable” for many freelance professions, said association president Friedemann Schmidt of the FAZ. In contact with patients, clients and customers, a high presence is required.

In view of rising energy costs, it is also necessary to question "how this affects the willingness of employees to work from home".

Labor Minister Heil, who visited companies in Saxony-Anhalt on his summer trip on Thursday, justified the planned rules with the health protection of employees.

It is not about a stricter home office obligation, as there was about last winter, he affirmed.

At that time, employees were obliged to work from home unless there were reasons such as space constraints or disturbances by third parties.

"It's about enabling the home office where the employees want it and there are no operational reasons against it," said Heil.

The rules must also be put in relation to the economic damage caused by new waves of infection.

“These rules also help keep the economy going.

Figures from the Munich Ifo Institute show that in April - i.e. shortly after the expiry of the home office obligation that applied in winter - a quarter of employees in Germany were still partially working from home.

No more recent data have been collected since then.

However, many companies have apparently permanently adjusted to more flexible models, as a recent survey by the Ifo Institute and the personnel service provider Randstad revealed.

According to this, 62 percent of the companies offer their employees the opportunity to work from home for office jobs - on average 6.7 days a month

(see chart).

The proportion is particularly large at 95 percent among large companies with more than 500 employees.

Among small companies with fewer than 50 employees, on the other hand, it is only just under every second.