Working from Home and Digitalization in Light of the Coronavirus (2nd Quarter 2020)
Covid-19 has the world firmly in its grasp. In the second quarter of 2020, on behalf of Randstad Germany, the ifo Institute surveyed just under 800 German HR managers to find out what effect the virus is having on companies and their work processes.
Overall, the coronavirus pandemic is having a positive impact on the digital transformation. Restrictions on personal contact forced companies to expand working from home – even though they feared that this would reduce employee productivity. Nevertheless, there should still be potential to offer more teleworking. A large number of companies are planning to make increased use of working from home in the period following the coronavirus. In all areas and across all company sizes, work is increasingly being done using digital tools, especially collaboration and communication in work teams. In the post-pandemic period, too, meetings will more often be held in the digital space. This means there will be fewer face-to-face conversations in the future. As things stand, e-learning and virtual job interviews have yet to achieve broad acceptance in companies. However, a majority of the survey participants want to conduct more virtual job interviews and offer e-learning in the future.
Potential for Working from Home Not Yet Exhausted
The lockdown led to a significant increase in working from home. Whereas 39 percent of employees were able to work from home at least some of the time before the coronavirus pandemic, the figure currently stands at 61 percent. However, the potential for working from home has not yet been exhausted. In theory, 80 percent of companies could offer their employees workplaces at home. Manufacturing saw a particularly strong rise in the share of employees working from home, going up to 70 percent. Service providers in particular expanded their use of working from home. For example, the share of service companies in which at least half of employees work (partly) from home rose to 15 percent.
Digitalization of the Economy
As a result of the coronavirus pandemic, the digital transformation has accelerated at a majority of companies (55 percent), with large companies implementing it more consistently than small ones. The pandemic drove companies either to introduce digital tools for communication (23 percent) or make more intensive use of such tools (36 percent). For a growing share of the workforce, videoconferencing has become part of their daily work routine during the pandemic. This change is likely to be permanent, as companies intend to hold virtual conferences more frequently even once the coronavirus pandemic has passed (64 percent), according to HR managers. Plans also call for a ramp-up of working from home (47 percent). On-site meetings, in contrast, are likely to be less frequent for the majority of companies (59 percent). In addition, business travel is coming under scrutiny, with 61 percent of companies planning to make fewer business trips.
