The corona pandemic has strongly promoted the home office in Germany. Studies show how this affects work culture. Who benefits, who is more likely to suffer?
Leipzig – For the morning conference in pajamas, at noon on the yoga mat instead of in the canteen and an early evening with the family: Most people’s reality has little in common with this ideal of the home office.
After a good year and a half of the corona pandemic, studies and surveys instead paint a differentiated picture of the psychological and physical consequences of working at home.
One thing is clear: Working in your own four walls has been boosted by the pandemic: According to a study by the Hans Böckler Foundation, before the Corona crisis, just 4 percent of the workforce in Germany mainly or exclusively used the home office, the proportion increased during of the first lockdown in April 2020 to 27 percent. The numbers are now falling again, but they are still significantly higher than before the pandemic.
Communication suffers
Studies are now providing indications of what consequences the home office can have – for example a study by Microsoft published in the journal “Nature Human Behavior”. The technology giant, which commissioned the analysis itself, ordered home office in March 2020. The study now analyzed data and communication from almost 61,000 employees from December 2019 to June 2020.
Result: Although more work was done in the home office, communication and collaboration between different departments suffered. Specifically, the employees spent less time in face-to-face one-on-one conversations; instead, they made more use of e-mails or text messages. According to the authors, this leads to employees being isolated and less information being exchanged. And that could have a negative impact on production and innovation.
For Hannes Zacher, work and organizational psychologist at the University of Leipzig, the study shows only one side. “While the Microsoft analysis offers a rather negative perspective, there is also evidence in research that the ability to work from home can be positively accepted by employees – but only if it stays within a certain framework.”
One to two days of home office is ideal
Accordingly, studies suggest that one to two days of home office per week are ideal for satisfaction and self-reported productivity. In such a framework, it would be possible not only to design communication digitally, but also to hold personal conversations. “From a psychological point of view, a video conference is still better than an email. In the long run, however, it cannot replace face-to-face conversations, especially when it comes to talking to one another in a trusting manner, working together creatively or resolving conflicts. “
Zacher himself had started at the end of 2019 to survey almost 1,000 workers about their physical and mental health. The beginning of the pandemic turned it into a long-term study: the participants have been surveyed monthly since March 2021. The psychologist collected observations on the consequences of the corona crisis on the world of work.
“Before the pandemic, extroverts were the ones with the higher level of wellbeing compared to introverts,” Zacher cites an example. It was the other way around: “Extroverts were more likely to be stressed by the situation, while introverts got along better.” Reticent people in particular found formats such as video conferences to be more pleasant.
Delimitation between teams
At the same time, Zacher and his colleagues saw that teams were breaking up into subgroups more quickly – an observation that fits in with a result of the Microsoft study. “A possible breaking point is the one between employees who are present and those who work in the home office,” he explains. Here management must ensure that there are no feelings of unequal treatment: “Managers must communicate and justify work structures well so that neither satisfaction nor corporate culture suffer.”
In any discussion about mobile working, it should not be forgotten that the place of work is also an important resource: “The office acts as a great equalizer in which everyone has the same opportunities,” says Zacher. In contrast to this, socio-economic factors come into play when working at home: “Childless couples in a large apartment can certainly work better at home than single parents or younger employees who live in shared apartments or confined spaces.” Dpa
