The home office is back and still there! There is a trend: in job interviews, candidates increasingly ask about it or insist on it – while many HR managers are reluctant to answer them. I notice that this desire of employees is developing into a new crucial question in recruiting.
The employers’ side had problems with this in the past. The question of working from home could poison a round of introductions. It could only get tricky when employees asked whether the hours they worked on the way to work should be taken into account.
Now the discussion has taken on a much larger dimension. Company representatives climb on it rather cautiously and suspiciously, with a mixture of half she pulled him, half he sank.
On the one hand, the bosses are concerned about the health of their employees and their relatives. At the same time, managers and their HR departments strive to keep work performance stable. They are struggling to ensure that the work process is as “normal” as possible. Ultimately, it is important to continue to offer services and products and to drive projects forward. Therefore, many superiors hope that the home office spook will soon come to an end.
Because although many employees in home offices are currently performing high-quality work, new challenges are piling up on management levels.
The following sticking points must be resolved at the management level:
- How does the management deal with employees who install new work equipment for the home office without consulting the company’s IT structure?
- How do you react to the increasing demands for compensation payments for home office facilities?
- What are the generally applicable, binding regulations for recording working hours in the home office?
- What framework does a company set up so that employees can be reached in the home office?
- Which departments go to the home office in which cadence?
- How do you ensure that teams continue to meet physically?
- How can new employees be well trained so that they can connect despite being virtual?
When it comes to questions like these, those responsible are walking a new kind of tightrope walk: when Novartis recently introduced the “Workplace Analytics” app, for example, it was supposed to help employees structure their day-to-day work in the home office. She should help with self-organization. Well meant, but at the same time sensitive: Numerous critics understood the new app as a new control instrument and questioned it indignantly.
Additional effort pushes those responsible to their limits
Many managers are doing significantly more work due to these new sticking points and criticisms: Under difficult conditions, they continue to be responsible for the results of the work results. During the distance working, you have to ensure team spirit and solidarity among employees. You have to lead agile project teams in home offices and prove yourself in virtual leadership.
Important messages are lost
And this with unforeseeable consequences: I ask myself, for example, what happens in the long run if we only really hear a fraction of the communication in video conferences? How do we understand or misunderstand each other when voice and facial expressions are perceived in team meetings, but at the same time many non-verbal statements are missing? We know from research that a large part of the effect takes place via non-verbal communication. It is therefore proven that important messages cannot be conveyed via video.
A home office is increasingly seen as a competitive factor
While companies are still struggling with risks, challenges, and additional work, more and more well-trained employees are demanding a permanent home office. They appreciate the new freedoms that come with it and rely on personal responsibility. Of course, some employees find it difficult to work from home because they feel isolated or are looking for more personal exchange. But I am increasingly hearing the demand for generous home office regulations. Companies that can boast with it have a competitive advantage.
The downside of the new freedom
But be careful: the employees may have to pay a high price for their new freedoms.
Because the current development also brings new risks for employees:
- Certain companies are looking into whether they will buy part of their work externally in the future instead of employing permanent employees. Jobs can be lost as a result.
- Remote office replaces home office: Bosses and bosses are wondering whether they shouldn’t move their jobs abroad if the local employees are no longer present or want to be?
- Companies are checking whether they are giving up their expensive office space in the best inner-city location. If you keep the meeting areas in open-plan offices that have been valued so far, canteens and rooms for employee events, for example, will be lost.
Wanted: More personal responsibility and discipline
Employees also pay their price when working directly from home. In addition to the new freedoms, they also face new obligations: employers and superiors insist on control and rely on measurable, agreed work performance. If employees want to be guided by results and do their work independently from home, then they work independently. That means: You have to be strict with yourself from time to time and regularly call yourself up to discipline.
That is not easy in the long run. It takes a lot of maturity and initiative to critically control your own performance, to correct your approach if necessary, and to motivate yourself to make another attempt.
Goethe probably also looked into the future when he once said: “He who does not command himself remains a servant forever.”