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Home office in the corona crisis: are employers to blame?

2021-01-27T10:37:31.618Z


Why aren't more people working from home in the pandemic? In a guest post, Katharina Borchert wrote: "The bosses often don't want to." Is that really true? What our readers experience.


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Photo: Maria Pavlova / E + / Getty Images

Home office would be possible much more frequently in Germany, and it would be urgently needed to reduce the number of corona cases - but many bosses just don't want to.

That's what Katharina Borchert wrote in a guest post for SPIEGEL.

In doing so, absurd reasons are often cited, such as occupational safety regulations, in which some managers are otherwise hardly interested.

With these copies of superiors, the desire for control or an understanding of performance that is somehow strangely linked to being in the company often plays a role.

The article received an unusually high number of reactions, both positive and negative.

Many readers and forum participants shared their own experiences or found it important to add aspects.

Here is a selection of the readers' mail.

Can't = don't want to

During your contribution, I had to think of my favorite trainer saying several times: "Can't I live on Don't-I-Don't-want-Street" and that's exactly how it often seems to me at the moment (not only in relation to home office).

So much more could be done.

Alex Baum

Don't just restrict private behavior

Thank you for this realistic and at the same time terrifying article, which also reflects my reality.

The corporate responsibility for combating the number of infections was discussed much too late.

It cannot be and is not sufficient if only private behavior is restricted.

Thomas Wacker

The raison d'être of managers

Many companies do not send people to work from home because this would mean that the managers, as controlling bodies, would have to fear for their right to exist.

It is time to rethink management - but unfortunately this also means that managers who are not adaptable with old ideas abdicate and management is reduced overall.

We postulate self-organization, but unfortunately we still install an identical number of managerial positions - also to enable opportunities for development instead of rethinking careers.

Another misconception: You can only meet a strongly changing environment to a limited extent with forward-looking organization.

»Planning means replacing chance with error« - unfortunately that is true far too often.

Tobias in the SPIEGEL forum

Employers' duty of care

I've been working from home since mid-March 2020.

Our company (American) immediately sent all employees who can work from home to the home office.

Now there are also laptops for everyone.

I know from a friend that she has to come to the office every day with the argument that there are no company laptops.

She too could easily work from home.

I really don't understand that you are exposing your employees, for whom the employer has a duty of care, to dangers that can be avoided.

For me it also has something to do with work-life balance - it's about health.

Unfortunately, many employers peddle such terms without even beginning to implement them.

Bärbel Hannemann

The state cannot decide that

My employer enables home office without any problems.

But I don't want to use this, because there is no decent place to work at home.

After working from home for a day, I get insane back pain.

This is not an isolated case either.

Most people don't have space for a desk.

I also consider cybersecurity to be extremely important.

Not all companies can afford certain standards and implement them within a short period of time.

We don't have to regulate everything through the state.

Even in the corona pandemic, this has to be left to the companies, provided the companies can comply with certain hygiene standards.

Companies know their processes better and can decide whether home office makes sense or not.

This is not a decision that a state can make.

Marcus R.

Rollback to Corona 

I can currently enjoy the "privilege" (because our company also sees it this way) to work completely from home, but "that can change again after Corona".

Why is it a mystery to me, because I have had fixed home office days for over 4 years, have been working almost 95 percent in the home office since last year and have not even handed in a project with a delay.

(Name known to the editors)

Berlin-Mitte is empty

The reality of my life in Berlin-Mitte: It's really empty, not quite as eerie as last year, but all of our offices are almost completely empty.

I also don't know of any companies in my environment that force their employees.

The subways are almost empty, the streets are pretty much too.

Really every other entrepreneur I know enables home office - if possible!

A successful tech booth, depending on the level of development, can safely pay a 1000 euro home office bonus per employee per employee, depending on the level of development, but many other companies cannot.

And we don't have to talk about the troubles of the slow connection, it's a catastrophe, every video conference in my home office is interrupted at least once by a WLAN failure.

Don't get it wrong: I am following your argument about yesterday's and weak so-called executives.

With me, of course, anyone can work from home who wants and can.

But I would have expected a little more research and differentiation from you.

(Name known to the editors)

Home office costs the right to emergency care

As an employee and father of a daycare child and a 15-year-old, I prefer to work in the company than at home in the home office!

You should think about what that means in concrete terms if a family of four loses the right to emergency childcare because both parents are "at home".

My wife is already in the home office, the older one does more bad than homeschooling, thank God the little one can still let off steam in the daycare.

You can't play with a toddler and work at the same time.

The seven weeks last spring without emergency care were sheer horror for the whole family!

Wolfram Heinz

Nobody infected colleagues

Mozilla is not a medium-sized company in rural Upper Franconia.

What works there doesn't have to work here.

With us, everyone from administration is allowed to work from home, many don't want to.

That's the lesson from spring.

No rest to work, too many disruptive factors.

No separation between work and private life.

Especially since a lot is not or not yet digital.

For us, manufacturing papers are still papers.

Here in the company we haven't had an infection.

With a good 400 employees on site.

We have now had ten corona cases, and none of them infected colleagues.

Our measures work!

Fabian in the SPIEGEL forum

The employer prefers to spread fear

I work for a medium-sized company in the Munich suburbs.

The effort that is being made to prevent workers from mobile working is considerable.

During the first shutdown last year, 95 percent of the workforce in our administration worked overnight for three months from home overnight and the company did not go under.

I have no knowledge of where it should suddenly fail now.

When the home office regulation was tightened last week, it was said that business activity would now be severely restricted by the federal government and that short-time work would also be an issue from now on.

Typically German: Let's make the employee a little afraid for his job, that is sure to pull in the crisis.

User "Norddeich" in the SPIEGEL forum

It's not always up to the boss

I have an employer who equips all employees with technical equipment and has made it possible to work from home for years.

The absurd discussion about the height of the table comes from the works council, which carries the subject of occupational health and safety like a monstrance.

The absurd discussion about the employer's participation in electricity costs, food costs and the like comes from the employees and is conveyed to the management via the works council.

Then there are the colleagues who are desperately looking for absurd arguments to get into the office.

In the home office there is simply no extensive chatter and gossip.

Please do not always just cultivate enemy images.

There are certainly employers who, against the resistance of employees, enable home offices.

Hans-Peter in the SPIEGEL forum

Icon: The mirror

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Source: spiegel

All business articles on 2021-01-27

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