Bitkom: Half of employees can be reached on business despite being on vacation
Many employees are on vacation between Christmas and New Year, but half of them are still available for work. Younger employees are less likely to do so.
(Image: fizkes/Shutterstock.com)
Half of employees in Germany can be reached by their superiors, colleagues and customers during their Christmas vacation. This is the result of a survey by the digital association Bitkom. Five years ago, the proportion was 71%, but fell to around 50% during the coronavirus pandemic and has remained almost constant since then. However, employees are not equally easy to reach via all communication channels. In addition, younger employees are paying more attention to their work-life balance and are more likely to switch off their devices when on vacation.
Microsoft Teams and Slack remain silent at Christmas
Most employees who are reachable over the holidays respond to messages via SMS or WhatsApp. A total of 48 percent of employees respond to text messages; the figure for emails is 45 percent. A total of 41% of employees are willing to make a phone call to their boss or colleague. Video calls or conferences, on the other hand, are not welcome. Only 15 percent are happy with this. Collaboration tools are primarily switched off over the holidays, with around seven percent of employees checking Microsoft Teams or Slack for new messages.
The age distribution shows that younger employees in particular value a good work-life balance. Only a third of 16 to 29-year-olds are available for work between Christmas and New Year. In the age group between 30 and 49, 58 percent are available for work-related matters in their free time. Last year's study showed that many employees assume that their superiors expect them to be available on vacation. This year, a total of 77% of employees stated that they did not have to work over the holidays.
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For the study, Bitkom asked 1004 people aged 16 and over whether they were available for work during the vacations between Christmas and New Year. The association represents the political and economic interests of around 2000 members, most of whom belong to the IT and telecommunications sector. Bitkom recently called for data protection laws to be relaxed to allow companies to train their AI models with personal data.
(sfe)
