For 18 years I have been sitting at my current workplace, writing, researching, telephoning, reading, correcting and designing - which one does as a journalist.
Every day it goes on like this, in the most regular presence, with the exception of holiday and sick days. No natural disaster can stop me from appearing in the workplace: I am a "teleworker," as I said earlier, I work in the "home office." As good as always.
I can do that because I can: In digital times, it is more or less incidental where I write my texts as a journalist. Main thing, I can connect via a fast connection virtually in the network of my publishing house and produce my work there. My hamburger phone number follows me wherever it blows me. My conversation partners do not even notice where the office is located, from which I communicate with them.
These are ideal conditions for work in the home office. And apparently this describes the dream job of many Germans: This proves the two-part, published last week report of the Minister of Labor Hubertus Heil (SPD) initiated future dialogue "New work, new security". He brings together findings that resulted from dialogues of salaries and Ministry of Labor experts with citizens and industry representatives.
Destination: the home desk
Twelve percent of employees (number of the Ministry of Labor: there are other estimates, which go up to 40 percent) are therefore already home-workers, at least now and then. Many others long for it: According to the report, around one third of all employees who have been denied the home office at home want to work at home instead of going to the office.
In the second part of the report, the Ministry of Labor translates these wishes into political action goals. The too pronounced "presence culture in the workplace" should be countered with a "legal claim to mobile work". Salvation wants to fulfill the desire of the workers so - and make a law out of it.
This is not new, but persistent
The topic is a revenant, SPD and CDU argue over it for years. Most recently, in January, Secretary of State Björn Böhning (SPD), a close confidant of the Minister of Labor, introduced the issue as a demand in the public debate.
Federal Minister of Economics Peter Altmaier (CDU) needed until the beginning of March to find a negative answer to this: For the reconciliation of work and family you have to do something, he said. But this requires more flexibility and no longer rigid legal regulations. He made it clear: A Home Office law is still unenforceable in the governing coalition.
Nevertheless Hubertus Heil tries it again, packed in a whole bundle of worthwhile proposals for the shaping of the future working world. Unlike in January, the legal right to the home office is now packaged preventively soft: employers could reject the "eg for operational reasons," it says from the Ministry of Labor.
This is reminiscent of a sketch in the Monty Python movie "The Life of Brian". The Popular Front resistance group of Judea resolves on all comrades a fundamental right to pregnancy and childbirth, regardless of gender - that is, whether biologically possible or not.
The work in the home office sometimes collides with the realities. A baker will not be able to take the oven home, and a surgeon operating on the kitchen table at home must rightly fear being imprisoned. So it is logical and understandable that a legal claim to mobile work for operational reasons must be rejected.
Only: what else does this legal claim bring?
In principle, work in the home office has long been a lived reality - at least for part of the workforce.
DPA
Federal Labor Minister Hubertus Heil (SPD): Demands right to Home Office
But do you need a legal claim that is not enforceable in practice to increase your willingness to work at home?
Where an increase in productivity is accompanied by greater satisfaction on the part of employees, home work should already be in the interests of the company: recognizing this is a learning and organizational process. But whether the home office makes sense for the individual employee, even then remains a matter of consideration.
A checklist:
What speaks for the home office?
For home work, there are good arguments from employee and employer view.
- Home office is family friendly. In principle, you are reachable when you are needed.
- You gain time because commuting distances are eliminated, which also benefits the environment.
- Not only this saves money: they participate in regular meals with the family instead of eating in the canteen or "outside".
- You can (often within limits) adjust the work cycle to your own needs / inclinations.
- You can move the center of life to a place that you like or live cheaper (instead of choosing your place of residence according to your place of work).
- From an employer's perspective: You save money because you do not have to provide a regular job. And ideally, the productivity of your employees - and their satisfaction increases.
What speaks against the home office?
This does not mean that the home office would be suitable for any form of work - or for any worker. Home work has its risks and side effects:
- Many employers fear loss of control over both the work done and the time invested.
- Employees realize this and often like to overwork their workload.
- The documentation of working hours is problematic, proof of overtime becomes a question of faith and trust.
- The supposed freedom of the home office is so often bought by self-exploitation. Numerous studies show that homeworkers work too much and too long.
- One of the latest studies comes from the AOK (which, by the way, emanates from 40 percent homeworkers in Germany). It documents that the mental burden of homeworkers is higher than with regular work in the workplace. Instead of being satisfied, some workers would become even more unhappy. This is also due to the fact that in permanent "mobile work" one can separate private life from work more badly.
- But the separation must be guaranteed: Homework requires much more self-discipline than regular office hours.
There are also soft, empirically elusive factors. Promotions, salary increases and the like often go by homeworkers. Employee rights such as the right to further training are rarely used. Above all, it is extremely difficult for permanent home work, communicative not to fall out of the company: employees in the home office do not get much, do not deepen relationships, losing visibility.
At rest, when the rest of the workforce has long since cleared out of the operation, they are quickly back on the radar - many employers consider the home worker to be "always ready". The criticized the presentation of the report from Heils Ministry of Labor and The Left, which obviously has her heart for home workers like me and also wants to score points: If you define a right to home office, then only in conjunction with a "right to non-accessibility "by the boss.
Something like that is already regulated in the working hours law?