It’s more comfortable, often quieter and you save a lot of time. Working from home was one of the few positive facets of the contact restrictions during the corona pandemic, especially for commuters. But that’s the end of it for now. In almost all companies, the distance rules are no longer applicable. The bosses finally want their employees back in the office.
But they are shy. Only five percent of people in Germany who work from home want to drive to the office every day again. Ten percent want to work at least “mostly” from there. This is one of the core findings of PwC’s global labor market study “Hopes and Fears 2022”.
In March of this year, the auditing and consulting company surveyed more than 52,000 employees from 44 countries worldwide. 2138 of the respondents come from Germany. In Germany, 35 percent want to work completely from home, 23 percent mainly and 28 percent halfway.
Employees in Germany are less likely to be able to work from home than the global average: 44 percent of employees in Germany stated that their job can be done remotely or from home. Globally it is 54 percent.
“The working world of the future is hybrid. This raises challenging but exciting questions, especially for us managers. For example: How do we motivate employees at a distance? How do we create and maintain sustainable relationships with customers?” says Petra Justenhoven, manager at PwC Germany. The solution is responsible and trusting leadership: “This includes an understanding of the needs of the team, the willingness to continue learning – and above all, to remain open to new situations!”
In addition, the study focused a lot of attention on the shortage of skilled workers: 29 percent of those surveyed worldwide said that there was a shortage of skilled workers for their own job description in their home country. In Germany, the number is similar at 31 percent. Companies try to counteract this by training their employees, offering them higher salaries and offering programs to strengthen their physical and mental health.
In order to close the gap in skilled workers, however, companies in this country are still using technology with a below-average frequency. When it comes to promoting diversity and inclusion, Germany is also below the global average: only 17 percent of the employees surveyed say that their employers hire people from abroad, more precisely those who have left the labor force because of parenthood or other reasons.
However, another finding of the survey is particularly dramatic: A significant proportion of employees fear that they will not receive further training in a future-proof manner. Three out of ten workers worldwide fear being replaced by technology.
Almost 30 percent of the German employees surveyed believe they have too few opportunities to learn from more technically skilled colleagues. 32 percent fear that their employer will not provide them with urgently needed knowledge.
29 percent of employees in Germany are concerned that their companies are not investing enough in innovative technologies. 20 percent of those surveyed fear that they will be replaced by technology in the next three years.
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