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Working from Home for Good? Lessons Learned from the COVID-19 Pandemic and What This Means for the Future of Work

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  • Kagerl, Christian
  • Starzetz, Julia

Abstract

In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, more firms than ever before have enabled their employees to work from home. Based on a representative firm survey in Germany, surveying 2.000 firms per month throughout the course of the pandemic (October 2020 until June 2022), this paper provides suggestive evidence concerning the effects of working from home (WFH) at different points in time during the pandemic and discusses implications for the future of work. We assess the potential of WFH in Germany to be 25–30% of private-sector employees. On the firm side, we find that higher WFH use is positively related to business success during the crisis, with increased employee productivity and employees working more hours when remote being possible mechanisms. Larger firms in particular are open towards expanding their WFH offerings in the future. During the pandemic, firms have experienced that WFH has worked well in many respects (e.g., productivity of employees, quality of work performed) and, for the future, they are willing to facilitate WFH in order to give their employees more flexibility, and to be considered an attractive employer. However, working on site brings advantages (e.g., communication, cooperation and onboarding of new employees) firms will not want to sacrifice, pointing towards a hybrid model of work.
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  • Kagerl, Christian & Starzetz, Julia, 2022. "Working from Home for Good? Lessons Learned from the COVID-19 Pandemic and What This Means for the Future of Work," VfS Annual Conference 2022 (Basel): Big Data in Economics 264061, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    • Handle: RePEc:zbw:vfsc22:264061
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    Cited by:

    1. Wolfgang Breuer & Jannis Bischof & Oliver Fabel & Christian Hofmann & Jochen Hundsdoerfer & Tim Weitzel, 2023. "Business economics in a pandemic world: how a virus changed our economic life," Journal of Business Economics, Springer, vol. 93(1), pages 1-9, January.
    2. Gathmann, Christina & Kagerl, Christian & Pohlan, Laura & Roth, Duncan, 2024. "The pandemic push: Digital technologies and workforce adjustments," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 89(C).
    3. Coskun, Sena & Dauth, Wolfgang & Gartner, Hermann & Stops, Michael & Weber, Enzo, 2024. "Working from Home Increases Work-Home Distances," CEPR Discussion Papers 18914, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.

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    JEL classification:

    • D22 - Microeconomics - - Production and Organizations - - - Firm Behavior: Empirical Analysis

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