Trigema boss Wolfgang Grupp has used pithy words against working from home. Entrepreneur Carsten Maschmeyer explains why Grupp is wrong.
Is the trend towards home offices a major undesirable development? Trigema boss Wolfgang Grupp caused a stir a few days ago with derogatory words about home workers. “Home office exists’s not for me. If someone can work at home, they are unimportant,” said Grupp, whose textile company employs around 1,200 people, to the “Tagesspiegel.” “The more people have studied, the more they want to work from home – but with me they could do the same register as unemployed because no one notices whether they are working or not,” said the 81-year-old.
Not all bosses see it that way. With Carsten Maschmeyer, a particularly prominent entrepreneur has now contradicted the Trigema patriarch. “If you don’t trust someone to work at home, you shouldn’t have hired them in the first place,” answers Maschmeyer in “Bild”. He warns against confusing presence with productivity. What counts is “not the time spent sitting at the desk, but the result at the end! Control demotivates. Control leads to unproductivity.”
Smart employers would rely on both home office and office presence, says Maschmeyer. At home you can often work with concentration, while the office is a place for creativity and team spirit. Home office also helps companies to attract urgently needed skilled workers. Fewer commuters meant less traffic and the freed-up office space could be used for other purposes such as living. Maschmeyer’s appeal: “The return of face-to-face culture must urgently be stopped.”
Home office: One in four people (also) works at home
The fact is: the home office is part of everyday working life for many employees. According to the Federal Statistical Office, around one in four employed people (also) worked from home last year. Whether and to what extent this is possible obviously depends not only on the boss, but also on the type of job. The Trigema textiles, for example, cannot be produced at home and, according to Grupp’s wishes, the administrative tasks should then also be carried out in the company.
But even in companies with a lot of office jobs, since the end of the Corona state of emergency, there has been a struggle about how much home office should be possible and how much presence is necessary. According to a current survey by the Ifo Institute, there are definitely reductions in office space in certain areas, while most companies are leaving their office space unchanged. “Only 9.1% of all companies plan to downsize their offices because they work from home. However, in individual sectors the number is significantly higher, up to 40%,” says ifo expert Simon Krause. Employers in the broadcasting and automotive industries, in advertising and market research, as well as information service providers and the IT industry are particularly planning to use less office space.
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Source: Stern
