Home office

More and more often I observe the question from executives who mutually demand the return to the office or struggle with it. A typical example …

I had to dismiss several employees because they didn't want to return to the office from home office. During the pandemic, everything seemed to work, and initially, productivity even increased. But the numbers later painted a different picture. The team structure suffered, and performance gradually declined. Nevertheless, the employees accused me of being wrong and not communicating enough. Is home office now a blessing or a curse for companies?

My Assessment

The central question is how we can establish remote work where it is fundamentally possible. How do we find a balance between the preferences of employers and employees?

The corporate culture, the first artificial intelligence of the work environment, plays an outstanding role here.

Sometimes traditional reflexes of leaders and self-chosen exits of employees reveal discrepancies that could be addressed together if desired. This is undoubtedly exhausting, but dealing with home office is increasingly decisive for competition.

It's also noticeable that such questions on social media often come with an underlying distrust of employees. A recent similar discussion was illustrated with a photo of an employee mowing the lawn in shorts. The view extends over the living room table with an abandoned laptop out into the garden. For me, it's a form of communication that says more about the leadership understanding itself and the trust within the team than about the actual productivity in the home office. What numbers were actually the basis for the initial assessment?