Wer ist zukünftig noch im Büro?

Erfahrungen mit Remote Work in Pandemiezeiten und ein Blick in die Zukunft

Abstract

The division A – Collection Management and Metadata with its two departments A1 – Scientific Services and A2 – Integrated Acquisition and Cataloguing is the largest division of the ZBW – Leibniz Information Centre for Economics with more than 80 employees. Even though the ZBW has promoted teleworking as a flexible way to balance work and private life for years as part of a modern, family-oriented staff policy, the conditions of the individual employees varied greatly in mid-March 2020, when everybody had to work from home full time due to the pandemic. There were employees who had already practiced telework when their tasks had permitted it. However, there were also employees whose tasks could only be done on site and who had had no experience with telework until March 2020. The report describes the experiences with telework from more than two pandemic years, e.g., how it was possible to keep in touch with the team, which organizational measures were taken to support the teleworking staff and how the team spirit and the sense of togetherness were strengthened. What remains after many teams return to the offices at least partially and how work in the ZBW will be organized in the future will be discussed at the end of this paper.