Employers take note: staff want more support in home office

• Survey of 1,011 employees shows how companies are dealing with New Work
• 29 percent of those surveyed feel overwhelmed by new work environments
• 48 percent want more support and training from their employers

Norderstedt, 16 March 2021 – Within the last few years, digitalization and new technologies have permanently changed requirements in the working world. And the coronavirus pandemic has only served to reinforce the trend of moving work out of the classic office environment. The new online survey of 1,011 employees in Germany, conducted at the end of 2020 by Corp News Media Thöring & Stuhr on behalf of Lufthansa Industry Solutions, shows the extent to which digitalization has spread in the corporate world.

Home office working not working out

The results of the survey show the evolution of home office working from exception to normality, reveal the experiences of users of tools such as Skype, Teams and Zoom, and present services that are already being offered digitally by employers. However, for a significant proportion of employees, mobile working or home office working is not working out for them. According to the survey, 29 percent of those surveyed feel overwhelmed by the new work environments and 48 percent want more support and training from their employers. Moreover, 45 percent of those surveyed find that managerial staff in their company are not fit for virtual working.

“The results of the survey show that the switch to home office has been difficult in many cases. Packing up the office laptop and sitting down at the kitchen table – that is not going to cut it. Real New Work goes far beyond simply implementing collaboration tools.”

Bernd Appel
Managing Director, Lufthansa Industry Solutions

Key questions and key findings

New forms of cooperation and new IT applications and platforms are currently being introduced at an accelerated rate so that people can still work. All this requires new skills, a new mindset and new work methods. How do employees view their current work situation? An analysis of the online survey brought the following key findings to light:

• Home office, mobile and virtual working have become a lot more prevalent as a result of coronavirus restrictions. However, 33 percent of those surveyed indicated that home office working was either not possible or not wanted in their company.
• Companies are increasingly relying on video conferences since the first coronavirus lockdown. Skype is the most popular tool with 53 percent of those surveyed using it, followed by Microsoft Teams at 40 percent.
• The proportion of organizations using the virtual working model has increased from 40 percent to 58 percent during the coronavirus pandemic. 56 percent of employees surveyed deem their company to be technologically well equipped for virtual working. However, 45 percent of those surveyed find that managerial staff in their company are not fit for virtual working.
• 22 percent of those surveyed indicated that their employers are not offering digital services such as digital work logging or payroll. In particular, self-service offerings such as being able to change your personal data or requesting business trips have not yet arrived at their companies.
• 29 percent of those surveyed feel overwhelmed by the new work environment. This proportion increases to 38 percent for respondents with home office experience. Just under half of the employees (48 percent) want more support from their employer. For employees with home office experience, this figure increases to 56 percent.

Lufthansa Industry Solutions has compiled the results from the online survey in a white paper on the topic of New Work. In addition, the white paper contains discussions with three experts on the key topics of collaboration tools, HR self-services, and leadership. Their practical experience sheds light on why and under what circumstances the new digital technologies are the way forward.