According to a recent study, the number of people working from home has skyrocketed during the pandemic.
In small companies in particular, however, there is potential for conflict when returning to regular operations, as the employer-related Institute of German Economics (IW) explained on Wednesday in Cologne.
In Germany, almost half (49 percent) of dependent employees were working from home in February 2021, compared to just ten percent before the pandemic.
According to the IW, a similar trend was also emerging at European level: while an average of eleven percent of all employees in the European Union worked from home at least occasionally in 2019, the figure was around 42 percent in February and March 2021.
In the Netherlands, 60 percent of employees work from home.
According to the IW, however, the number has since fallen sharply again.
Dialogue between employees and employers
The IW researchers predicted that the spread of working from home will increase in the future. However, where there is a gradual return to regular operations, this also harbors potential for conflict: a survey of employees from 2018 shows that a good fifth of employees in Germany are not allowed to work from home, although they wish to do so and say they are doing their job for it Home office would be suitable.
The IW therefore called for a dialogue between employees and employers "to find appropriate specific solutions" about whether and how to work from home.
However, the researchers think little of state interference in this dialogue: the right to discussion laid down in the coalition agreement of the new federal government, i.e. the right of employees to discuss possible mobile working with their employer, risks "unbalancing" the negotiation process, they criticized IW Researcher.