Working long hours in a home office lowers employee retention and requires managers to be more empathetic

Hamburg, 22^nd of November 2021 – The Corona pandemic has turned our working models upside down: Compulsory presence has given way to hybrid working and home office. The fourth wave ensures that employees will again increasingly work from home in the winter months. By this week, 3G rules will be mandatory in the workplace and home office will be compulsory throughout Germany.

This faces companies with major challenges. It has become clear that simply creating the technical infrastructure for remote work is not enough. Managers are increasingly faced with the task of allaying the fears of their team members. After all, many employees are suffering from the ongoing insecurity.

They lose a sense of the expectations placed on them and wonder whether the pandemic could have a negative impact on their careers because good performance may no longer be seen. Others complain about a lack of support from their manager. They miss interest in their person and genuine, empathetic exchange. In addition, motivation and emotional attachment to the employer decline because the values and convictions of the company fade. More and more employees in predominantly remote workplaces are thinking about changing jobs.

Andreas Kaufmann, partner and coach at PAWLIK Consultants, has taken an in-depth look at the challenges surrounding hybrid work and written a 26-page white paper. "We have to find new forms of togetherness," says Kaufmann: "The existing corporate culture has to be replaced by elements that work in the hybrid work environment." Ideally, these new rules of the game would be developed together. "Successful cultural change can only work with genuine participation of all stakeholders, managers as well as employees, and transparency."

Joachim Pawlik, founder and board member of PAWLIK Consultants emphasizes that executives should spend time with their team members to find out how they are really doing, without associating a specific reason with it: “This type of conversation is the basis for empathy in a completely new situation for employees and organization. ”According to Pawlik, in the future good leadership will no longer only take place on a professional level, but also on an emotional level. Attentive listening and an understanding of the situation of employees will be the core elements in order to fill in what is neglected by digital work.”

You can download the whitepaper „Hybrid Working“ here:

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