"As much as the home office is celebrated: It's in danger of eroding"

At the beginning of the Corona pandemic, the home office was seen as a place of promise and as a step into a modern working world that had finally been taken. However, the current "HomeOffice Report" of the rheingold institute also shows downsides. Psychologist Birgit Langebartels explains what these are in the first part of her interview with CONSULTING.de.

The interview appeared on CONSULTING.de on September 20 and September 26, 2022.

In your "HomeOffice Report", you dealt with the psychological consequences of working from home? How did you go about it? Who did you interview and how?

The rheingold institute has examined the social changes in numerous studies, conducted hundreds of in-depth interviews on the topic of New Work and complemented them with research explicitly on home office. The "Homeoffice Report" is the condensate of current studies on the topic of hybrid working and leadership. A total of 211 in-depth interviews and well over 1,800 quantitative interviews have given us insight into the meaning of work in general and the radical change in the world of work due to digitalization and working in a home office.

All studies have taught us that both internal and external cohesion are threatened by the current upheavals. As much as the home office is celebrated for its possibilities to combine work and private life, it is in danger of erosion.

The sense of belonging is fragile if managers do not take countermeasures. Home office weakens loyalty. And this bond must be created differently than in the past.

What causes for the threatening erosion do you observe? What special psychological effects does working in a home office have for employees?

Unlike in Lockdown, we no longer have to look only at working from home. We are now talking about hybrid working. Many employees have now returned to the office. This results in yet another mental challenge for us humans. It takes something like a physiological and psychological willingness to change, because there are different constitutions in which I work - whether from home or in the office.

But let's look back to the early days of the Corona pandemic and the consequent move of many employees to home offices: At the time, this was an incredible promise. Before Corona, we lived in a social climate where everything seemed feasible. Multi-optionality was writ large. In this situation, the home office came just at the right time. All of a sudden, the impression arose: I can cancel out space and time - take care of private things and work as efficiently as possible at the same time.

But many people have noticed that this calculation does not work. The situation leads to excessive demands and often leaves behind the unsatisfactory feeling that neither the private nor the professional have been properly taken into account.

With reference to the sensation just described, your report uses the term "long homid". Could you explain this in more detail?

We at the Rheingold institute coined the term in reference to the long-term consequences of "long covid". Many people - even those who were initially very positive about the home office - have gradually sunk into a spiral of exhaustion, depressive mood and perceived self-dissolution, which also takes hold of other areas of life. The origins lie in self-exploitation, never-ending working hours, but also in boredom, loneliness or the feeling of no longer being seen and valued for one's work. And this slipping into it basically works like the proverbial boiled frog.

Symptoms were and are often not clearly attributable to people, creep in, and are not tied to specific events or situations.

When commuting to the office was still the norm, fixed routines, procedures and guidelines acted as an automatic support for getting into a working frame of mind, into operating temperature, so to speak. It starts at the beginning of the day: I get up differently, I dress differently, I leave the house differently, the wind blows around my nose, I enter the company. It smells a little different than at home, I see my colleagues - some of whom annoy me, but who are often very friendly. In addition, there are business trips, all of which have fallen flat. All of that adds up to a mental state. And in private, other conditions prevail. That's all mixed up now.

At home, this whole complex of work/company is suddenly reduced to the person and his computer - possibly even at the kitchen table. In other words, a very small space in which the change of mental state for work must be individually designed. This has overwhelmed many.

What special challenges and difficulties arise for managers who lead decentralized teams?

Managers are also only human, so they often have the same experience in relation to hybrid working. At the same time, they have a different responsibility and face additional challenges accordingly. For managers, the main issue is "trust versus control". For them, it's all about the intelligent trust they place in their employees. Not blind trust, but one that is based on agreements. Of course, there are differences depending on the company, the type of production or service, and the type of employee I have in front of me.

After all, employees have different ways of dealing with the home office - and of course I need to know about them when I'm managing.

You have identified four prototypes in relation to these manners: The private, the permeable, the home officer and the field worker. First, why do you work with such prototypes and how did you filter them out?

Prototypes serve us to illustrate that we humans deal with challenges differently and need different things in order to work as effectively and also satisfactorily as possible, as well as to be guided accordingly, as in this case.

For their development, we conducted in-depth interviews. In these, we are guided on the one hand by a guideline and the complex of questions we want to cover. On the other hand, we also let people talk about their experiences in concrete terms. What does a working day actually look like? What do you find easy? What do you find rather difficult? Our in-depth interviews last two hours and are conducted by trained psychologists. They have the demanding task of following the subject matter - in this case, dealing with the home office - while at the same time asking agile questions.

Because we don't have a fixed list of questions that we check off. We encourage our interviewees to talk and use a variety of techniques to ask questions briefly or to have facts described visually.

The prototypes were created on the basis of these very descriptions. It is important to emphasize that the manners are not completely tied to individuals. For example, I may have started the pandemic as an individual "privateer" and later changed to a different type.

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Ms. Langebartels, in the first part of our interview on your "HomeOffice Report," we talked about the problems many people have in balancing their private and professional lives when working at home, and explained what the term "long homid" is all about. Today, we're going to talk about the four employee prototypes that distinguish you in terms of how you deal with the home office: The "Privateer," the "Permeable," the "Home Officer," and the "Field Worker." Let's start with the "privateer"...

The "privateers" are those who are absolutely convinced that they can juggle everything, do justice to family and work with equal intensity. With this type, the professional and private demands on the person become blurred. At the end of the day, these individuals have difficulty working efficiently at all because they cannot draw boundaries.

What is important in the leadership of this type?

This type needs a special kind of connection and control. Here, the manager must cultivate a more intensive exchange and at the same time express appreciation for the work performed. Sometimes these "privates" have to be rescued back into the office. Sometimes they are relieved when the requirement is that they must be present on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Then this can even be a relief.

"Privatiers" are therefore the types for whom the private tends to take a back seat to the professional. Of course, there is also the phenomenon that it works the other way around...

That's right, namely the type we call "field workers". These people have difficulty drawing boundaries in other ways. For them, actually, their whole life is just work. They work late into the night, have the feeling that they always have to be "on" and are not allowed to go into the private sphere at all. This is either misunderstood or sometimes exploited by many managers. Here, the person's seemingly special motivation is perceived as a priority.

However, this motivation arises from the fear of not being seen, not being valued, and that the work will not be noticed at all.

How do leaders best act when they realize they are dealing with this type?

Here it is also important to set boundaries. But not to your private life, but to your work. As a manager, you shouldn't just say: It's okay if you finish your work or take a break. But rather: It is desirable that you do this! Corresponding behavior should then also be exemplified as a manager.

Because in the end, people like that run the risk of burnout.

Regular appreciation of work - already an important issue in general - is once again of particular importance in this case.

The "permeable" and the "home officers," on the other hand, you have identified as types who actually get along quite well with the home office. What distinguishes them in each case?

The "permeable" people manage to reconcile their private and professional lives quite well by maintaining a very flexible, almost playful approach to the situation. They enjoy incredible freedom and self-determination by saying, for example, "I'm going to work from eight to eleven, but then I'll take a break for three or four hours and work until late in the evening. They don't get overwhelmed so quickly because they take both spheres into account in a balanced way. These are the colleagues who have a child running through the picture, who have the door to the family open sometimes, but who can also close it when they need a rest. They simply have a very self-determined and self-effective approach to their time management.

How do you lead this type? If he wants to be led at all...

One problem with the "permeable" from the company's point of view: These people do not want to return to the company at all. They experience an imposed return to the office as an incredibly tight corset. This type does not want to be deprived of this freedom. In the end, this can lead to a disconnection from the company. That's precisely why it's important to entice permeable employees back into the company every now and then. But it has to make sense. This is not the case, for example, if they have to write something creatively in peace. It's different with creative meetings, for example, where they can have fun and then happily stick to the corresponding specifications. Here, you really have to be careful not to push them.

Otherwise, they run the risk of quitting and looking for a job where they can regain the freedoms they desire.

And the "home officers" run what kind of regiment in the home office?

The "home officers" paradoxically get both spheres together by strictly separating them. This type sits in his study at eight o'clock in the morning and works until 12:30, then goes into the dining room where - to exaggerate - his wife has prepared the meal, still calls the dining room a canteen, has lunch with his wife for three quarters of an hour, and then goes back into his study. Where no one is allowed in, where no one is allowed to disturb. This type of person shows that many have fallen back into old role patterns. That the woman makes the meals and opens the door when the parcel service arrives. Even if, of course, we also observe women as home officers.

What does this type need from the company or the manager?

Above all, creative input, which you get in the office, for example, when you stand at the coffee machine with colleagues or go to the canteen together. This is important because otherwise home officers tend to get bogged down in their strict processing of tasks. However, I have a positive example in mind where someone has mutated to a certain extent into a home officer: a man who was initially the private citizen type, but then realized that he was not able to solve the mixed situation properly and was overtaxed. He set up a small garden shed, then "commuted" those three steps to the garden shed in the morning, and that alone made it much easier to get into the right frame of mind for work.

As a manager, you have to recognize these four types and respond to them individually. But have you also derived general tips that can be applied to the entire workforce?

The first thing to do is to create security. Above all, managers should signal: I care how you are doing! Fixed meetings also create security. A meeting culture is needed in which there is room to speak out when things are not going so well. In which there is room for managers to signal that they have difficulties with hybrid working and leadership.

A transparent work plan is also advisable: If everyone knows who is working on what at any given time, this further builds trust.

When dealing with individual employees, expectations must be clarified. What do the company and I as a manager expect from you? But also vice versa: What do you expect from me? A particular challenge is to create personal closeness at a distance: This can be done via a team channel, but with somewhat older employees it can also make sense to pick up the phone and call: Listen, how are you doing? How are you getting on? What did you do over the weekend?

It is often a problem that employees have the feeling: My work is not really seen, I lack appreciation.

Proximity bias, for example, can also contribute to this. This is the tendency to rate the performance of people who work in the office close to the manager and are therefore more visible higher than that of employees who work consistently from the home office.

How do managers best prepare for their leadership work under the conditions of hybrid working?

All in all, you have to be fit for the new age. It will no longer be the way it was before, but the working world will remain hybrid. The following are important here: the mindset, the skillset and the toolset.

To the mindset: one accepts that working has changed and that it will not be like it used to be. One agrees to see and work on the positive, but also the challenging sides of hybrid working: I want to work effectively, but I also want to promote enjoyment when I work as an FC. I don't want to lose my employees.

About the skillset: Here you should answer the questions: What else do I need to be a good leader? What do I still need to acquire personally? Where can I go for further training? Where can I educate myself as a manager? Where can I find appropriate further training for my employees?

About the toolset: You should always go into the backcopy loop. What have we learned? What can we do better? What can we discard because it doesn't suit us? What tools are there, which ones make sense for us?

In order to find the right mode for the team or individual employees, managers can also dare to experiment. Try out an agreement for two months and then talk about it again.

Last question: How do you handle the issue of hybrid working at rheingold?

We are very flexible, respond to the employees and see what suits them. Since the summer, we have also been asked to be in the office half the time, if possible. What we have noticed: Certain appointments have become even more important in presence - we want to establish that again as our work culture. We will also be redesigning our office building once again, because the premises also need to be adapted to the new conditions of hybrid working. For example, if I have a three-person office and everyone is in a different team meeting at the same time, that doesn't work. At rheingold, we have a very intensive exchange between management and employees. What do you need in order to work well and effectively? But also: What does the company or the management level need?

The interview was conducted by Alexander Kolberg.