Proportion of SME employees in home offices rises sharply

In the hospitality industry in particular, home office is hardly an option - 86 percent of hospitality businesses with between 4 and 49 employees cannot send any employees to the home office at all. But even in production and manufacturing, almost half of SMEs need all their employees on site.

According to a study, however, the switch to home office is easier in industries such as ICT and marketing or in the service sector. In these sectors, 87 and 83 percent of the managers surveyed said they could have at least some of their staff work from home.

This study, published Tuesday, was commissioned by Digitalswitzerland, the umbrella organization for digital Switzerland, Mobiliar, the federal government's National Cyber Security Center (NCSC), the School of Business at the University of Applied Sciences Northwestern Switzerland (FHNW) and the Swiss Academy of Engineering Sciences (SATW).

According to the results of the survey, two-thirds of companies across all industries are in a position to send all or part of their workforce to the home office if necessary.

Fast conversion to home office

According to the study authors, it is also remarkable how quickly companies were able to switch to working from home during the lockdown. "Working from home was possible for the majority of companies without any problems or with simple measures," study author Karin Mändli Lerch of the JRC Zurich research institute told the media. However, it goes without saying that those companies that were already very digitally oriented were at an advantage during the changeover, she said.

During the lockdown, around 40 percent of employees at companies that can switch to home offices actually worked from home. Although this figure fell again after the lockdown, it was still considerably higher at the end of the survey in early October than before the lockdown. Overall, 10 percent of all employees worked from home before the lockdown, and 16 percent afterwards.

The development is particularly striking among companies that are active in ICT or marketing, Mändli Lerch said. "Here, 16 percent of employees previously worked in a home office, now it's 31 percent - so that's a doubling of the number." Whether that increase will be sustained in the longer term, however, is not yet clear, the study authors stressed. However, 29 percent of the companies indicated that they would increasingly allow their employees to work from home in the future. (SDA)