Nationwide survey Bonn front runner in home office statistics
Bonn · More than half of all employees in Bonn worked in a home office at the beginning of the year - more than anywhere else in Germany, as our interactive map shows. However, several companies have already announced their intention to return to more presence-based working.
More than one in two employees in Bonn worked from home at the beginning of the year - more than anywhere else in Germany. This is the result of a representative survey by the institute infas 360.
Last year, in February 2021, the institute had already determined the regional use of home office. At that time, the nationwide share was 27.4 percent; the leading federal state for home office work was Hamburg with 33.4 percent. The leading region at the beginning of 2021 was Munich and Starnberg with 43.6 percent of all employees working from home.
Meanwhile, the second pandemic winter shows clear shifts - despite the home office obligation that existed from November to March. Once again, the Institute surveyed more than 11,000 people this January about their working circumstances. The result: home office use fell by four percent nationwide.
Interactive map: Bonn is the nationwide leader in home office work
The nationwide share of home office use is now 23.3 percent; regionally, use fell even more sharply in some cases. For example, home office use in Erfurt fell by more than 28 percentage points compared to the previous year. Elsewhere, however, home office use increased significantly - among others in Bonn, where the value rose by more than 18 percentage points. With a home office share of 52.6 percent, the federal city is the clear front-runner, well ahead of Erlangen (47.1 percent) and Bremerhaven (45.4 percent).
But what is the reason for this? "The survey is a survey of individuals, not of companies. Unfortunately, the results cannot be used to explain why Bonn is the leader or which companies are leading," explains Beatrice Nolte, Data Scientist at infas 360.
We can speculate that, on the one hand, the proportion of companies in which working from home is possible at all is relatively high in Bonn - including many federal authorities, international institutions, non-governmental institutions and the entire administrative apparatus of Deutsche Telekom and Deutsche Post. In public authorities in particular, the legal obligation to work from home has probably ensured that opportunities for mobile working have been offered.
Companies in Bonn want to work more in the presence again
However, several companies in Bonn had already announced in March that they wanted to return to more presence-based working after the expiry of the home office obligation, including the Sparkasse Köln-Bonn and Deutsche Telekom. Others, however, want to continue to rely on a mix of on-site and mobile working, such as Deutsche Post or Stadtwerke Bonn. This makes them part of a large majority: a company survey of the information industry conducted by the Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research (ZEW) last summer showed that 74 percent of companies plan to offer working from the home office even after the Corona pandemic.
(Original text: Sandra Liermann; Translation: Mareike Graepel)
