Dubai, United Arab Emirates – Since the Corona pandemic, work-from-home options, combining office attendance with remote work, have become part of daily life in many companies, which see clear advantages in this type that may make it shape the future of jobs, but of course it is not without disadvantages.
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The Mannheim Institute for Economic Research (ZEW) conducted a survey of nearly 1,200 companies from the manufacturing and information sectors.
The survey was conducted last June, and according to it, companies view working from home positively in light of employees’ satisfaction with the course of work in this way.
More than two-thirds of companies surveyed see hybrid business models (combining work from home and company headquarters) as an advantage in this regard.
More than half of companies also see advantages in attracting skilled talent, while only one in 10 companies see disadvantages.
Opinions differ on employee retention. While nearly half of companies, or 47 percent, believe that hybrid business models help retain employees, about a third of companies here see drawbacks.
difficulty of communication
Companies have been highly critical of the impact of hybrid business models on internal communication and teamwork, with two-thirds seeing drawbacks in this regard and only 7 percent seeing advantages.
27 percent of companies evaluate this point impartially, and companies tend to evaluate the consequences of this on employee productivity and innovation more negatively.
However, the advantages appear to outweigh the disadvantages overall, and according to the survey, only about 10 percent of companies plan to reduce or end their work-from-home offerings over the next two years.
In contrast, companies with existing offers to work from home expect an increase in the number of employees working according to this model.
29 percent of companies in the IT sector expect to increase the number of their workers from home, and in the manufacturing sector, the percentage of companies that expect this is 34 percent.
According to the survey, some employees in 80 percent of companies operating in the information economy work at least once from home per week, and in the manufacturing sector, this was the case for about half of the companies.
“The rate of working from home is much higher in large companies with at least 100 employees,” said Daniel Erdzik, director of studies at the institute.
He added that 88 percent of companies in the manufacturing sector used work-from-home options, and in the information economy, almost all companies of this size used them at a rate of 98 percent.
