While several and in fact, mostly ‘big’ companies have set an RTO policy to its employees since 2022 globally, in Germany however, the return into the office is nowhere in sight.
In short, working from home (WFH) is here to stay. According to a recent study, only a measly 4% of German companies want to abolish the home office.
In other words, the German home office is firmly anchored in companies – even with the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020-2023 gone.
To put this in another way, German companies that want to reverse this are the absolute exceptions. Throughout Germany, as elsewhere, there are a vast number of empty offices as more and more employees prefer to WFH rather than to commute to the office.
Many workers in Germany prefer – and actually “do” – work from home. These companies continue to rely on home office work – even after the end of the pandemic as they recognise that “what workers do” (new) is more important than “where they do it” (old).
Accordingly, three out of four German companies in which working from home is possible are sticking to it – in short, there is no going back to corporate offices. These results from Germany refute the recent and highly publicised views that there is a “trend” towards going back to the offices.
Yet only 12% of German companies are planning stricter WFH requirements. In other words, the recent statistic puts a rather distorted media image right.
In recent months, corporate media reporting had focused on a few individual companies in which home office was reduced. This grossly overstated the actual development inside German companies.
The survey on WFH was conducted monthly and included about 9,000 companies in Germany. In addition to the 4% of companies where office workers had to return to the office, 11% of companies want to make their home office rules even more flexible. In a whopping 79% of all companies, working from home is basically feasible.
Expectedly, this occurs much more in large companies (93%) than in small and medium-sized companies (75%). However, there are also marked differences between industrial sectors:
- 82% in the service industry have WFH provisions,
- 89% of manufacturing companies offer working from home, and only about
- 40% of companies in Germany’s construction/ delivery/forwarding sector offer WFH.
Most importantly and this is across all German industries, only a minority would like to restrict or abolish working from home.
Despite all this, recently, several companies had indeed imposed stricter home office rules on their workers. For example, Deutsche Bank, car manufacturer Volkswagen, Deutsche Telekom and the software company SAP were focusing more on a higher presence in their offices.
In Germany, there is no legal entitlement for workers to work in a home office. Yet, there is also a difference between what workers are allowed to have in their home office and whether the company pays for the office equipment at home.
In some ways, it is almost certain that face-to-face work is superior to the home office – at least in some respect. However, there are more focused WFH rules that specifically regulates working from home.
Such company-based regulations can improve the coordination among office workers and office teams. This can be achieved by observing and implementing common office hours and overlapping times of attendance.
In that way, workers and teams can meet. This will lead to improved communication among workers and teams. All of this makes the home office even more productive as information flows between office workers and teams.
Meanwhile, 13% of companies in Germany’s service industry and 8% of manufacturing companies are planning even more flexible home office regulations. Yet, the overall survey result is that:
home office is and remains firmly anchored in Germany.
The clock in a German office is not turning back to 2019 – the time before the COVID-19 pandemic (2020-2023). Instead, the COVID-19 pandemic has “permanently” changed the world of work.
Most German companies are sticking to the home office – at least as a part-time model. Some even want to expand their offers on working from home.
This result comes – in spite of – media headlines announcing that companies want to bring their employees back to the office more and more. In Germany’s IT industry, a massive 82% of workers work at home at least once a week.
At the same time in Germany’s mighty manufacturing sector that is more “location (read: assembly line) based, this figure still is “at least 48%”.
This means that the proportion of companies that allow their employees at least “one home office day per week” has remained at a “consistently high level” since the COVID-19 pandemic. In other words, cold hard statistical facts rebut the recent media hype. This is nothing new.
In the previous year, the figure for WFH was 80% for companies in Germany’s information industry, and 45% in the manufacturing industry. Despite stricter requirements, working from home continues to be “firmly established”.
In February 2024, for example, almost a quarter of the employees worked partly from home. Currently, 22% of German companies in the information industry allow working from home for a “full five days” per week. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, that figure was just 12%.
Interestingly, companies with more employees have a more far-reaching arrangements for working from home compared to smaller companies.
Results from around 1,200 German companies in the manufacturing and information industries show that the proportion of employees working in the home office almost doubled since the COVID-19 pandemic. Compared to pre-COVID-19 crisis, working from home has become “conventional” in recent years.
Before the COVID-19 pandemic, the share of German companies with home office regulations in the information industry – that includes information and communication technology, media service providers and knowledge-intensive service industry – was only 48%. Meanwhile, in the manufacturing sector, it was just 24%. Since then, this has increased substantially.
Within the next two years, companies do “not expect to reduce” working from home offers. The very opposite is the case as WFH is set to “increase” further.
One reason is that offering working from home is an incentive for employees. This is set to continue. The proportion of German companies that seek to offer home office by the year 2026 will continue to increase:
Despite these statistics, there has been a “media” debate about returning to the corporate office. Set against this is Germany’s Labour Minister who recently called for the right to work from home.
This would further support Germany’s wide-ranging “hybrid working models” that are already used. In other words, there is no “return-to-office” on the horizon. And despite the media attention of a possible departure from the home office, various hybrid working models remain widespread in German companies.
Worse for the believers in a “return to the office” model, German companies expect a further increase in the use of home offices in the coming two years. At least, that is the result from a second survey that asked around 1,200 German companies in June 2024.
In June 2024, office workers in 82% of companies in Germany’s IT industry worked from home at least “once a week”. While in the manufacturing sector, the figure was 48% matching the result from the survey above.
The proportion of companies that allow workers at least one home office day per week has remained at a “consistently high level”. This, too, matched the survey above. In other words, both surveys came to the same result: working from home is here to stay.
Most importantly, there is “no sign” that companies are moving away from home office work. This survey also delivers supporting evidence that post-COVID-19, mobile working (WFH) has become firmly established in German companies. Looking two years into the future, companies do “not expect” to reduce offers of WFH.
Quite the contrary, the share of companies with WFH is set to increase again – to 88% in the information industry and 57% in the manufacturing industry.
In addition, companies expect an increasing proportion of office workers who will use working from home arrangements in the future. In other words, working from home remains popular among German office workers.
Two-thirds of companies in IT expect that more than 20% of their workers will work from home at least once a week by June 2026. Many believe that hybrid working can be designed in a variety of ways and adapted to the operational needs of companies.
Roughly speaking, there are five home office models that can be distinguished. These range from one to five home office days per week:
- Office First: home office is an exception. Work takes place in the physical corporate office.
- Synchro-Hybrid: Fixed home office and office days are defined, during which employees work at fixed (synchronous) or partially flexible (synchronous semi-flex) times.
- Static-Hybrid: Workers opt for home office or corporate office, working hours vary from rigid to fully flexible.
- Fully Flexible: Work from anywhere. Workers are completely free to choose their place of work and make new decisions every day about where they work from.
- Home First: Workers work in home office. Work in the physical office remains the exception.
Whatever the model, 42% of companies in Germany’s IT industry have workers to work from home at least three days a week. Before COVID-19, home office was only possible in 21% of companies.
As for all home office models, the current distribution is also far above the level from before the COVID-19 pandemic. Importantly, in most cases it is about twice as high. This applies to Germany’s IT industry and its manufacturing industry.
This survey confirms the results above: larger companies offer more models with several home office days compared to smaller companies. In other words, the larger a company, the more likely it is that workers will be able to use WFH arrangements.
WFH models with at least three home office days are used in about three quarters of large companies in Germany’s IT industry (at least 100 employees). This share of the company falls to 61% in medium-sized companies (20 to 99 employees) and is only 35% in small companies (five to 19 employees).
Hybrid working models with at least two home office days per week are currently used by 91% of large, 80% of medium-sized and 55% of small companies in the IT industry. In Germany’s manufacturing sector, the share is 76% for large and 15% for small companies.
All in all, whatever model of working from home is used, whatever the industry and company size, working from home is firmly established in Germany.
This is not going to change. If anything, the trend is upward. Many companies expect to have more – not less – workers working from home. There is no return to the office – the opposite is clearly the case.
Born on the foothills of Castle Frankenstein, Thomas Klikauer (PhD) is the author of over 1,000 publications, and books about Managerialism and The Language of Managerialism.
