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Home office (archive photo): Permanently in many companies - and then hopefully no longer at the living room table
Photo: Sebastian Gollnow / dpa
The corona pandemic has apparently changed the world of work permanently: According to a recent survey, a large number of companies in the information industry and in the manufacturing sector are expecting significantly more home offices after Corona.
"Not only has the proportion of companies with long-term home office plans increased, but also the proportion of employees who are likely to make use of such offers in the post-coronavirus period," explained Daniel Erdsiek from the Center for European Economic Research (ZEW), who carried out the survey.
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Accordingly, in June of last year, 64 percent of companies in the information industry planned to enable their employees to work from home even after the pandemic - in June 2021 it was already 74 percent. Around half of the companies in the industry currently expect that after the pandemic, 20 percent of their employees will work from home at least once a week. In June 2020, only one in three companies assumed this would be the case.
Even in the manufacturing industry, which is less suitable for the home office than the information industry, according to the survey, 46 percent of companies currently expect that some of their employees will work from home at least once a week in the future.
In June 2020 this value was 37 percent.
And before the pandemic, only 24 percent of companies could imagine working from home on a regular basis.
Equipment of home offices expanded
In fact, according to the survey, more employees work from home in both sectors than before: In the information industry, 63 percent of companies have more than a fifth of employees.
In the manufacturing sector, this share is around a quarter of companies.
Equipping employees with digital devices has been improved accordingly.
A majority of companies in the information industry (82 percent) and in manufacturing (70 percent) had already equipped some of their employees with home office technology before the pandemic.
Every third company in the information industry and every fourth company in the manufacturing sector increased this proportion in the pandemic, according to the survey.
According to ZEW, around 1200 companies with at least five employees each took part in the survey.
A survey that the Ifo published in mid-July showed that many employees in Germany returned from their home office to work in June.
At that time, however, it was still mandatory to work from home.
mamk / AFP
