A third of managers (34 percent) are of the opinion that employees work from home because they don’t like being in the office. Two reasons are given as the reason for this: avoiding long commutes as well as the working atmosphere and the social conditions in the team. Better time management for family and household, more comfortable and cheaper work at home, stress avoidance, health and less motivation are mentioned much less frequently. This is one of the core statements of the management report from the Hernstein Institute for Management of the Austrian Economic Chamber: 1,500 Austrian and German managers were surveyed, 623 in Austria.
“Leadership work can be used to counteract this, especially when there is a poor working atmosphere,” says the head of the Hernstein Institute, Michaela Kreitmayer.
But what makes good leadership work? This was also asked: 54 percent mentioned empathy and empathy, 53 percent an open attitude, reliability and accessibility. The presence of managers in the workplace and the criterion of “being at the workplace more than the employees” play a minor role: only twelve percent see this as a very important aspect of leadership work.
Managers also see potential for development: 49 percent think it is important to take employees’ strengths and weaknesses into account. But only 28 percent say that it fully applies to them. The situation is similar with empathy: only 32 percent would describe their own leadership behavior as empathetic.
