Home office
Ex-SAP HR manager: “The need to be present is the opposite of culture”
The software company SAP orders its employees back to the office, sparking a debate. Former human resources manager Cawa Younosi defends the home office against the lazy image.
Mr. Younosi, as head of human resources at SAP, you introduced home office back in 2018 – as one of the first companies in Germany and long before everyone else was forced to do so by the corona pandemic. Why did you do that back then?
Flexibility is the most important thing for employee satisfaction. SAP is an international corporation with employees scattered all over the world. My own team was spread out from India to Peru to Mexico. Some of them I only met in person once a year. Telling these people that they should drive to the office every day in order to call or write to me from there is nonsense, to say the least. In 2018, 22,000 employees at SAP were able to work from home – completely freely, i.e. up to five days a week. That worked very well.
Published in Capital 11/2024
Source: Stern
