Nev­er con­sider work­ing mod­els in isol­a­tion

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Planned for a long time and nobody is satisfied

The right balance between presence and self-determined workplace choice is often difficult to find. If you ask employees, the majority prefer the freedom to choose their own working hours and place of work rather than having to be present. But even then, great satisfaction is not a given. A look at relevant studies and scientific work provides answers as to why this is the case. While the obligation to be present in the office is now perceived by many of those affected as a lack of appreciation, people who are free to decide their own working hours and place of work often criticise inadequate communication or even fear that they will fall behind when it comes to promotion measures and careers. Both of these factors impair satisfaction, can weaken loyalty to the company and lead to a drop in performance.

Utilising HR practices as resource managers

Based on these findings, Dr Katharina Radermacher and Prof Dr Martin Schneider from the Chair of Human Resources Management asked themselves how this dilemma could be resolved. Their thesis was that HR practices geared towards the respective work model can compensate for deficits and thus contribute to significantly greater employee satisfaction. To test the research hypotheses based on this, they used a data set collected in 2022 from employer reviews on kununu.com. This was supplemented by questions on the working model as part of the Best Workplace Award survey. A total of 4,257 complete data sets were thus available, which not only included the assessment of key employer characteristics, but also provided information on whether the evaluators worked predominantly in presence, hybrid or with a free choice of workplace. The willingness to recommend the employer to others was used as a measure of employee satisfaction.

Communication as a decisive factor for satisfaction with flexible working models

As expected, good communication proved to be a particularly important factor for satisfaction with flexible working models compared to presence models. Those who are free to choose when and where they work are dependent on a functioning exchange of information with colleagues and superiors. This applies not only to working hours outside the office, but increasingly also to attendance times. This is because many companies have used the reduced presence of their employees as an opportunity to reduce the number of workstations. Depending on the occupancy rate, spontaneous decisions to go to the office may mean that there are no neighbouring workstations available.

Dr Katharina Radermacher and Prof Dr Martin Schneider were unable to find any significant interaction between certain working models and measures for personal development and career advancement with flexible forms of work. Contrary to expectations, employees who are free to choose their place of work and thus presumably spend less time in the office than other employees do not appear to place greater value on such support than employees with a more frequent office presence.

Salary and benefits as well as the working environment are decisive for satisfaction with presence models

The study has good news for companies that would like their employees to be more present. Satisfaction with the generally much less popular inflexible working model can be significantly increased through the targeted use of customised HR practices. One possible option is salary and benefits. The effect of good technical and physical workplace equipment was significantly stronger in the sample. A positive working environment increases the recommendation rate by 30 percentage points compared to facilities that are perceived as inadequate. This effect is also seen, albeit to a lesser extent, in hybrid working models. Here, good equipment still increases satisfaction by 22 percentage points. In the case of technical and physical facilities rated with the maximum number, satisfaction with all three working models - flexible, hybrid and presence - is at the same level.
In contrast, the working atmosphere is - contrary to expectations - equally important for employees in all three working models.

Do not view working models in isolation

"What we can confirm with our study is that the compensatory effect of HR practices offers a very large lever to increase the success of different working models," explains Dr Katharina Radermacher. She points out that effect strengths can vary in individual cases. In addition, other measures can also increase satisfaction. The two scientists are currently investigating the deeper correlations in a further study. However, the current analysis of the Kununu data already contains specific information on the organisation of physical working conditions. Here, it is particularly important to ensure that the institution supports different forms of work in order to give those working in presence the opportunity to find the right working environment based on the respective work task or mood.

The IBA Study 2024 is available for free download under IBA Publications.

The Wiesbaden-based Industrieverband Büro und Arbeitswelt e. V. is the industry association for the holistic design of office work. It pools expertise and represents the interests of manufacturers of office and contract furniture as well as acoustic, lighting and other furnishing solutions. Employer attractiveness, holistic interior design and New Work are also central topics of the online expert platform IBA Forum. The IBA is also the conceptual sponsor of ORGATEC, the leading international trade fair for modern working environments.

Symbolic image (Besim Mazhiqi): Dr Katharina Radermacher and Prof. Dr Martin Schneider highlight the advantages and disadvantages of different work concepts and explore the question of how HR practices geared towards the respective work model affect the satisfaction of employees in the different work models.

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