DOMOTEX HOME WORKING 60
BALANCE In recent times, homes and offices have merged into one. But
as working practices continue to change, the secret lies in creating environments that can combine the best of both worlds
Words | World Show Media staff Photography | Shutterstock
We used to talk about the importance of work-life balance and how it was vital to our health and wellbeing. These days, it’s harder than ever to fi nd the diff erence between the two as our homes become our offi ces and everything appears to blur into one. That may have been something thrust upon us a year ago, but these
days it’s fast becoming the norm with more than half of all German companies insisting they want their staff to continue to do some form of work-from-home even after the pandemic is over. The country’s Ifo Institute found that 54 per cent of businesses felt this way and as many as three out of four were telling their employees to stay away from the offi ce to conform with new social-distancing rules. Before the virus struck, home working was relatively rare in Germany.
While about 56 per cent of employees had the technical ability to do so, only about half actually did. Similarly, France has seen a growing
QUO TE
Athina Bluff | Topology Interiors BACK TO CONTENTS DOMOTEX MAGAZINE 2021
shift towards the trend of the télétravailleur, one that has been growing since 2017 when 25 per cent of the workforce was working remotely. Many companies now have offi ces as well as remote teams. Others, such as Doist, Zapier, or Buff er, are totally remote. And while the German government was taking steps to enshrine the practice in law, Spain was drawing up an agreement with unions and business associations on a decree to regulate what had been, until then, an uncommon practice.
The US press release distributor Businesswire points to a rise in the European home offi ce furniture market “as a result of the increasing demand from people working at home regularly or sometimes”, a sizeable market of about 83 million individuals. Today Germany is by far
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