Secret home office: Many employees are at home more than permitted

The days when employees spent the whole week working from home are over in many places. More and more companies are calling their teams back to the office. However, it is primarily hybrid systems that have become established. Employees most frequently spend three days in the office and two days working from home – This is the case at Telekom, SAP and Otto, among others.

And yet it is clear that these rigid rules often create tensions in the workplace. This has given rise to a new trend: the so-called "hushed home office". Managers are trying to resolve disputes through unofficial agreements. This is the result of a survey of 1000 home workers conducted by the job platform Indeed.

Secretly working from home, but by arrangement

According to the survey, one in four (27 percent) are granted more home office days by their manager than officially permitted –, provided their performance is good. This underlines the great popularity of location-independent work, for which over 40 percent of employees would even accept a loss of salary.

In most companies, the number of permitted home office days is clearly regulated: 68.7 percent state that the number of working days at home is fixed. However, the rules are often not checked. At 50.6 percent, there are only loose controls. Only companies with fixed office days have stricter controls, with 71.2 percent in almost three quarters of all cases.

In practice, this creates scope – both for a flexible interpretation in favor of employees and for the opposite. For example, 13.8 percent state that they are called into the office by their managers more often than the official regulations stipulate – even though their work does not require them to be physically present. In companies with strict attendance controls, this figure is as high as 20.2 percent.

Freedom of choice increases satisfaction

Whether with fixed rules or without agreements: At 57.3 percent, the vast majority of all respondents are dissatisfied with the current regulations; 25.5 percent of these are even very dissatisfied. Employees who can decide freely about their presence and home office days are the most satisfied with 47 percent.

Stefanie Bickert, job and career expert at Indeed, comments on the results as follows: "Even employees who are officially allowed to work from home often find the existing regulations too rigid or inflexible. The result is a silent erosion of formal rules through informal agreements with superiors or the scheduling of private commitments on days when employees are present."

This article first appeared on t3n.de .

(jle)