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Stuttgart (dpa) - After the good home office experience in the corona pandemic, the financial group Wüstenrot & Württembergische wants to focus significantly more on home work models in the medium term, even after the crisis.
From 2023 onwards, the aim will be “that we have seven office workplaces for ten employees and that the other three then work from home”, said W&W CEO Jürgen A. Junker of the German press agency.
"And if more employees want to work from home on individual days, then with pleasure - why not!"
The only prerequisite for this is that the requirements of the customers of the group specializing in building society and insurance business are always met.
Junker said that before the pandemic, very few W&W employees had worked from home now and then, even if corresponding offers had already been made in parts.
However, the corona crisis and the obligation to work from home, which was temporarily necessary for reasons of infection protection, led to a rethink in the workforce, even after the crisis.
"With the experience gained, many say that they have had good experiences with this concept because, for example, they save themselves the journey every day and thus gain two hours of free time every day."
The acceptance of home office and the competence in dealing with it have also increased among executives.
The 51-year-old emphasized that at W&W the quality of the work done by employees in the home office is sometimes “even higher than in the office”.
Online meetings were more formal, "but they are often more tough, efficient, and more targeted".
The absenteeism is also currently lower than in previous years.
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However, Junker cannot imagine a complete home office model for all employees.
"All in all, too much important interpersonal relationships would be lost."
Admittedly, video conferences could complement face-to-face conferences, but in the long run this model is “not sustainable” enough.
"We notice that video conferences reach their limits when it comes to more than just working through a work plan."
According to its own information, the W&W Group has currently sent around 70 percent of its employees to the home office because of the second corona wave.
The health emergency meant that even managers were temporarily only hired on the basis of video calls.
“We used to have our first video interviews every now and then, but there were always face-to-face meetings.
These are just completely different encounters.
If you sit across from each other in person, you get into conversation differently than via video telephony.
Even the all-important human assessment is only possible in a personal conversation. "
According to a survey by the digital association Bitkom, people who work in the corona-related home office generally have mostly positive experiences - and want to work flexibly even after the pandemic.
According to the association's calculations, even after the end of the corona pandemic, many more people will work in the home office than before.
More than one in three people will choose their place of work flexibly.
Before the pandemic, home office was said to be the exception.
The Stuttgart-based W&W Group was created in 1999 from the merger of the two traditional companies Wüstenrot and Württembergische. The group employs around 13,000 people, 7,000 of them in the office and 6,000 in the field.