Home office on the decline?: Employees are returning to the office more often

Home office on the decline?
Employees are returning to the office more often

18.09.2024, 08:10 a.m.

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After the end of the pandemic, employers assume that the home office trend will no longer be reversible. However, a study now shows that employees are coming back to the office more often. The real estate specialist JLL expects that the debate about home offices will be resolved by another issue.

According to a survey, office workers in German cities are driving to work more often again. Employees in Berlin, Hamburg, Munich, Cologne, Frankfurt, Düsseldorf and Stuttgart recently came to the office on average 3.6 days a week, according to a representative survey by real estate specialist Jones Lang LaSalle (JLL). In a study in summer 2023, the figure was 3.2 days in a typical working week. This means that office attendance is approaching the level before the corona pandemic, when the office was visited on average four days a week, JLL explained.

The occupancy rate of offices has also increased and is now at 72 percent (previous year: 63). This is slightly less than before the pandemic, when offices in the seven metropolises were on average 79 percent occupied, according to the online survey, in which 1,530 office workers took part in June.

“The return to the office is gaining momentum and more and more companies are moving towards establishing a fixed number of office days again,” said Helge Scheunemann, research expert at JLL Germany. Even those concerned with freedom of choice and the requirement of “complete flexibility” are returning to the office.

The increasing presence in the office is therefore spreading across many sectors. According to the survey, people are spending more time in the office again, particularly in IT – where working from home is traditionally very common – but also in industry and financial services. In consulting and insurance, however, the numbers fell compared to the study a year ago, and there was stagnation in trade, transport, logistics and tourism.

JLL sees new trend

However, JLL does not expect “that we will return to a full office week in the short to medium term.” Research expert Scheunemann sees a new trend: “In the next few years, the discussion about remote working could be replaced by an intensifying discussion about a four-day week.”

Unlike JLL, the Munich-based Ifo Institute sees no trend towards a large-scale return to the office across Germany. Home offices are “by no means on the decline,” Ifo recently announced. According to an Ifo company survey, employees recently spent 17 percent of their working time at home, the same amount as a year ago.