Germany: what lessons has the current situation been teaching the nation’s human resource managers?

Since the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic crisis, the massive deployment of telework has turned the corporate arena into a huge laboratory that is trying out new ways of working and the work of the future. So what impact does telework have on employee productivity levels? Does the office still have a future? What lessons are HR managers drawing from the crisis in terms of work organisation and indeed how has their work also evolved? The German Association for Human Resources Management (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Personalführung-DGFP) together with the Fraunhofer Institute for Industrial Engineering-IAO have conducted several surveys since the beginning of the crisis in order to try and answer these questions. In conversation with Planet Labor, Kai Helfritz, DGFP’s head of membership and cooperation, describes the main lessons German HR managers have learned; many observations of which are similar to those in neighbouring countries.