Organize the home office correctly: The corporate culture has to fit

Home office and digital, virtual working methods are on everyone's lips, but by no means for everyone Organization possible and feasible. A question of corporate culture!

A trend that is spreading

Home office - a trend that is spreading. At first it was only big Companys such as Coca Cola or Microsoft, today more and more companies that want to appear hip and cool in the course of employer branding are advertising their employees with free Choice at work place and time. Sounds good - but the home office must also fit into the corporate culture and the management must be geared towards it. Otherwise the shot goes with great freedom fast backfires – for them too Employees.

First a few facts: A study by the management consultancy RW3 CultureWizard among 30.000 employees shows that digital work across locations and national borders is already Everyday life heard. 87% of the management and 50% of the employees of multinational corporations carry out their work at least partially virtually. 75 percent of those surveyed stated that it is difficult to develop trust in virtual teams. 79 percent complained that they had too little time to build relationships and 71 percent that they had too little sympathy.

At 33 percent, half of the team members did not live in their own country, so the time zones were different Communication make more difficult. And 70 percent are bothered by cultural differences in conflict management, especially since 41 percent have never met their virtual colleagues in person. One of CHRIS at the University The study published in Bamberg together with the job exchange Monster also shows: Of 7.040 participants, 43,8 percent of those surveyed have fewer social contacts with colleagues in their home office and therefore run the risk of being cut off from informal communication. And 24,3 percent even fear reduced career opportunities.

The psychological experiences of the home office

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After many years in the home office, I know from my own experience what psychological challenges the home office can pose to employees: The lack of social contact can lead to loneliness. Missing Feedback especially when it comes to small things, it can make you feel insecure. It is not for nothing that coworking spaces are very popular among freelancers, as they simulate exactly the office feeling and offer opportunities for regular exchange and exchange Networking give.

In addition, you have to discipline yourself more in the home office so that you don't get distracted by family, neighbors, the household or the nice weather. On the other hand, sometimes you really have to force yourself to take breaks, exercise and eat healthily - things that you have to do in the Office might join in automatically. who free decide can, when and how much he works, usually works more and often to the point of self-exploitation.

Home office from the perspective of companies

Some time ago I interviewed Nadine Ziese, Human Resources Director at Coca-Cola Germany, at an event. Ziese was born in 2012 Age Promoted to this position at the age of 31 and has been instrumental in enabling the company to give employees time off to work where they choose.

Previously, employees had six days a year to work from home. As of this year, they can make use of this opportunity as often as they like. "We don't offer teleworking, but flexible working options," says Ziese. In discussions with employees, she found that opinions on the subject of working from home are quite divided: “Some find the flexibility that compatibility great with the family, the others lack the floor radio.”

The employees are free to choose

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It is important to the HR Director that employees have free choice and are not subject to additional controls: “Those who work independently are more productive and motivated. We want to measure our employees by the results and no longer by how many hours they worked. This is the only way we can shape a culture of self-determination and flexibility. ”

But this also means that the employees themselves take responsibility: “The home office is not a panacea. You also have to deal with the needs of your colleagues. Everyone has to see when their presence is required, but at the same time allow themselves enough breaks and free time.” Ziese knows that this is a difficult and lengthy learning process. Incidentally, she herself does not count her working hours either: “It is important to me that I mean at the end of the week Tasks done, but also that I can say on Sunday evening that I had a fulfilling time with my family."

Self-responsibility with Beigeschmack

For me, however, it always has a bad taste when managers assume personal responsibility among their employees and leave them with seemingly free choice of working time and place of work. If you listen more closely to sentences like: "Of course, everyone has to know for themselves how often they can be missing when there are managerial tasks or team decisions", which quickly put pressure on employees. In fact, I think management can do a lot to make the home office experiment a success.

Exactly this aspect has hardly been considered in many discussions so far: The question of what advantages and empirical values ​​companies have made with home office regulations and whether the employees actually work more productively as a result. And whether that also translates into figures and gewinnen reflected - for one thing, quite independently of the question that companies could save pure office space by working from home.

The bare numbers

Now, Coca-Cola probably has good reasons for such Measures – for example, that future employees of younger generations value flexible working hours and that the company wants to remain attractive to these high potentials. What about everything Commitment However, what is missing are verifiable facts and figures that allow a statement to be made as to whether and how flexible working hours actually pay off in terms of employee productivity and thus corporate profits. It's probably not possible to say that in such a short time - and moreover: How did you want to put that in relation?

However, reference should be made at this point to the analysis by Prognos AG, which was published in 2005: It calculates a return on investment of 25 percent for family-friendly personnel measures from the controlling figures of companies. The potential savings of the participating medium-sized companies amounted to several 100.000 euros each.

Why do companies struggle with new working time models?

This shows that it is advantageous for many companies if they offer their employees flexibility and freedom of choice - especially with regard to the compatibility of work Job and family - allow. The employees will provide them with increased Motivation and productivity. In many companies, however, traditional structures prevail: The Executive want to see and checkthat his employees do something too.

My research has shown that medium-sized companies in particular are struggling with new working time models: flexible working is in demand here too, for example when there are children. The companies then also offer more family-friendly working hours, during which the employees have to be in the office three days a week, it is better to open a company kindergarten or something similar. This shows that the way to completely free working time allocation is apparently only possible via small steps can be done. A question of corporate culture that will only slowly emerge according to the motto "We've always done it this way".

Increased organizational effort

Another Problem is undeniably the increased organizational effort: How are you supposed to reach colleague X if he prefers to work at night or in a different time zone? I experience again and again that employees want to pick up the phone quickly. Here are rethink and new technical tools are in demand: Away from the dialogical, that too eMail involves towards the collective virtual work.

Colleagues can hold over one Projects to speak, then work on documents together, for example via Etherpads or project management tools such as Slack. Everyone knows what the other has contributed. And it saves time because you don't have to wait for others to edit it or not know exactly which version of a document is the latest. Chat forums, wikis and digital boards also help everyone Team-Members to find out about the project anytime, anywhereStatus and report the results.

Networked with the iPad

For example, at the American photography agency Shutterstock, small teams usually work on projects over long distances and in different time zones. Are used here eMail, Skype, Google Hangout, and cloud-based collaboration tools like Google Drive. But it also simulates the normal office situation, including a foothold, many product developers work in different locations while working constantly talking about iPads together.

This shows that the particular challenge is to virtually weld a team despite the physical separation and to enable a trusting collaboration. This is a task with which more and more companies have to deal with increasing global networking.

Team virtual together

When it comes to keeping teams virtually together, the informal communication, the Flurfunk, must also be taken into account. Sounds difficult because digital communication is usually purposeful and leaves little space for random encounters.

But there can be a remedy here, too, for example through the virtual coffee bar or the virtual lunch, regular virtual meetings and also personal ones Meetingswhere the whole team comes together. If such new forms of work have not yet arrived in the corporate culture and the home office is just grafted on because everyone does it, I really see no reason for this experiment.

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