Many companies want their employees to be more present in the office again, Amazon is abolishing home offices completely. That doesn’t make sense, says a home office researcher.
Mr. Kunze, the Amazon retail group is ordering its employees back to the office five days a week from January. Home office is only permitted in exceptional cases, as was the case before the pandemic. Will a wave of layoffs soon hit Amazon?
I would definitely suspect that fluctuation is increasing – although that is of course speculation. Studies show that fluctuation in connection with attendance regulations increases by up to a third. I suspect that’s one of the reasons for Amazon’s decision: they want to indirectly fire people. However, I don’t think doing it this way is particularly wise because it will most likely cost highly sought-after talent that the company actually needs.
Amazon boss Andy Jassy justifies the move by saying that the aim is to maintain the successful corporate culture. So you don’t think that’s credible?
It’s true that identification, cohesion and social relationships overall suffer when working completely remotely. But we are not in this situation at all, not even at Amazon. We are in the hybrid working world in which there is definitely presence. Identification means having an emotional bond and this will hardly be strengthened by a strict rule, but will probably even be massively weakened because employees feel bullied. They may then continue to do this for a while, but only because they are well paid.
© Ines Janas
Florian Kunze received his doctorate from the Institute for Leadership and Human Resources Management at the University of St. Gallen and holds the chair for Organizational Behavior at the University of Konstanz, where he also heads the Future of Work Lab. Among other things, Kunze researches the topic of home office and mobile working and has been conducting the Konstanz home office study since the beginning of the corona pandemic in March 2020.
Are the employees who remain at the end the ones Amazon actually wants? Who can handle pressure better?
This would mean that management equates presence with performance. Presence is supposed to ensure higher productivity, but this has not been proven by scientific studies. Productivity depends on the activity: I can do something individual very well at home. For something that requires a lot of interaction with the team, I need more presence. I would doubt that those who are most present also contribute the most to the company’s success. In addition, a strict attendance rule leaves a lot of potential unused because, for example, women and other disadvantaged groups need flexibility in order to be able to work productively and have better career opportunities.
Are there reasons that speak in favor of a complete compulsory attendance?
In certain work phases, for a new project or to train new colleagues, increased presence on four or even five days makes sense. For some activities, presence is of course absolutely necessary, for example in production or maintenance. But for office jobs, it’s not necessary to come to the office five days a week. In Germany, 40 percent of jobs are suitable for mobile working.
With your long-term study on home office, you have been investigating since the beginning of the pandemic how home office has a long-term impact on employees and companies. The latest data from May of this year shows, above all, major differences between the views of managers and the rest of employees. Managers increasingly have the impression that communication and process efficiency suffer as a result of working from home. Why do perceptions differ?
Managers have different goals in mind than individual employees, who often want maximum flexibility. The remote working world definitely brings challenges, especially when it comes to communication. My hypothesis is that managers are also very stressed by the new situation and the old situation, in which they supposedly had more control, offers them security.
Is it also because managers are under greater pressure to achieve economic goals?
Yes, among other things. The long-term study also shows that the higher the hierarchy level, the more critical managers become towards mobile working. They think you can just give a scheme and solve a problem with a top-down decision, but that doesn’t work in practice. Middle managers are particularly under pressure, as they have to do justice to their employees and meet the targets from above – all in the middle of a transformation.
Does face-to-face work actually have a measurable impact on the company’s success?
It’s hard to say exactly because there are many different activities in a company. Objective values are only available for individual activities in which productivity increases by 13 percent when working from home. My thesis is: Companies with a strict attendance rule will suffer long-term losses in productivity. Two key indicators of productivity could develop negatively: On the one hand, employees are less productive and more stressed because their workload increases due to less flexibility. Then they can carry out less difficult tasks or even skip them. On the other hand, fluctuation is increasing and if I lose a lot of good workers, productivity will suffer in the long run.
Isn’t there anything wrong with the impression many companies have that their employees have made themselves too comfortable at home?
I wouldn’t call it comfortable. The new work and associated living situation is much more pleasant for many. They can carry out care tasks better and have more autonomy to organize their working day. That doesn’t mean there isn’t abuse or problems. Overall, autonomy in the home office leads to intrinsic motivation, which companies should channel accordingly. Then there is no contradiction.
The home office study is primarily intended to show how working from home affects emotional exhaustion. How does this relate to the compulsory attendance?
Based on the With current data we cannot yet identify a causal connection. Nevertheless, they are interesting: The perceived stress and exhaustion of everyone who has to work under strict attendance rules is almost twice as high as those with looser rules. One explanation for this is longer commutes, but also that one’s own freedom is restricted again.
How can managers manage the transition from home office back to face-to-face work in order to reduce resistance?
I advise open communication. Employees then usually understand why face-to-face work is necessary and useful and come to the office with greater motivation. It is important that the day at the office is really worth it, because there are many exchange opportunities, for example. If employees have to accept the commute, limit their personal flexibility and then sit in video conferences in the office all day, it is not very motivating.
In many German companies, employees are supposed to come to the office on three days. Has Amazon now initiated something that will completely turn our working world back to pre-pandemic times?
The larger German DAX companies are watching what is happening in the USA very closely and are partly taking their cue from it. This was the case with home offices or with agile forms of work and could happen again now. However, I do not believe that a five-day attendance rule can be implemented across the economy. Large companies like Amazon or, in Germany, SAP and Deutsche Bank think that they have such a high profile and are such an attractive employer that they can afford it. However, across the board, many companies have to make an effort to attract applicants and retain good people. Even though the labor market has recently become more tense, employees are in a very good negotiating position and can prevent a complete rollback.
Source: Stern
