Flexible working between freedom and identity: right to work from home?

Should there be a right to a home office? Parts of the Christian Democrats say yes. But cell phones and laptops are not enough. Employers should consider a number of factors before releasing their employees to “freedom”. Above all, it requires a well thought-out Strategy.

New technologies open up new possibilities

Laptops, smartphones, fast Internet – Modern technologies open up new possibilities for life to organize, and also the work. Employees are therefore increasingly demanding that the job adapts to their life and not the other way around, in terms of space and time. Home office, sabbatical, flexible working hours are often expressed wishes.

But many Executives fear, thereby Control to lose. If one employee is granted freedom and the other not, this fuels envy and resentment, is another Anxiety. So they put off change. But that is dangerous, because employees expect of Companys and executives increasingly to deal with their wishes and to respond to them.

Right to work from home?

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There, where the Economy hesitates, now wants to intervene in politics. The Christian Democratic Employees (CDA) recently called for the German Working Hours Act to be expanded to include a legal right to work from home, as has already been done in the Netherlands. In some companies this has long been reality and part of the corporate culture. Many German companies would be faced with enormous changes.

Markus Klups, strategy consultant and CEO of Zukunftsagent, sees this proposal positively: “The models for working hours and location will be Future be different than today, project-based work will increase significantly. The Significance Germany as a production location is shrinking, which is why knowledge work is becoming increasingly important for us. And this will no longer be bound to time and space. Innovations cannot be confined to the rigid corset of traditional ones Pattern to force Companies have to act faster, more flexibly and more innovatively in order to keep up with developments. The issue of flexible work arrangements is directly related to this.”

Respect personal life designs

However, far-reaching changes in company management require a well thought-out strategy, with the help of which individual Measures be checked and implemented. What does it bring, which one Risks does it hold? Markus Klups explains: “The digitization of the Working world goes far beyond handing employees smartphones and laptops and calling it flexible working. It is important to respond to the requirements of the company and the personal life plans of the employees. A successful one Changeprocess requires a sustainable framework first, before the next step is the work environment on the individual needs the employee is adjusted.”

A statutory home office regulation would also mean that clear fewer employees are on site in the companies. The more flexible and individual the work is, the more difficult it is to build and maintain a culture in the company that fosters identification. After all, corporate culture essentially consists of how colleagues interact with one another, and that often happens in between – we eat lunch together or take a coffee break, chat about private matters. The leaders of a company also play a central role. But they also have to be accessible. If employees are geographically widely distributed, it is more difficult to maintain a corresponding corporate culture.

Success factors Trust and transparency

“When it comes to flexible work arrangements, care must be taken to combine the greatest possible freedom with physical presence and maximum exchange. This requires guidance. Otherwise the company might fall apart into a loose collection of situationally interacting people who hardly have anything else in common,” Markus Klups puts it in a nutshell. This calls for a completely new leadership style. ” In the future, executives will be less concerned with their professional qualification measured,” he predicts. “Your task will instead be to turn from a 'swarming togetherness' Team to shape, to bind and thus to shape the culture. "

Finally, leaders will be responsible for Trust and create transparency. Transparency is especially important when different employees use options differently. For an employee in Marketing is it easier its Tasks to do in the home office than for someone in research or product development. Justifying these differences is important for a trusting working atmosphere and is one of the tasks of the Guide.

Hercules task for management

At the same time, objectivity should be guaranteed. Decisions on working models must always be comprehensible for the persons concerned. If employees have the impression that privileges are distributed according to gusto or even sympathy, this leads to dissatisfaction and a bad climate.

All of this shows that controlling modern working models is an extremely demanding management task, one could almost speak of a Herculean task. Corresponding initiatives up to New Work-Structures should therefore be anchored in corporate management and be in line with strategic goals. The impulses from politics make it clear that companies can no longer escape this discussion. Anyone who courageously anticipates changes can benefit from them.

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