Family-Friendliness New developments in technology are making it easier for companies to be flexible about when and where their staff work. However, a recent survey of companies and employees conducted as part of the Corporate Family-Friendliness Monitor 2019 (Unternehmensmonitor Familienfreundlichkeit 2019) shows that the relationship between mobile working and how the compatibility of family and career is actually experienced can be ambivalent.
On the Ambivalence of Flexible Working: The Influence of Corporate
IW-Trends
German Economic Institute (IW)
Family-Friendliness New developments in technology are making it easier for companies to be flexible about when and where their staff work. However, a recent survey of companies and employees conducted as part of the Corporate Family-Friendliness Monitor 2019 (Unternehmensmonitor Familienfreundlichkeit 2019) shows that the relationship between mobile working and how the compatibility of family and career is actually experienced can be ambivalent.
Almost nine out of ten employees say their working hours can be reconciled well or very well with family and social obligations outside the workplace. While mobile workers are particularly likely to be satisfied, they are also afraid of missing out on the more interesting tasks if they make extensive use of family-friendly working conditions and consider it important for their careers to be available to their companies outside working hours. This is where a family-friendly corporate culture has a contribution to make by limiting the drawbacks and enhancing the benefits of flexible working for employees. Extensively digitalised enterprises are more often characterised by a corporate culture perceived as family-friendly. Through the targeted use of HR policy instruments such as results-based management companies can ensure that flexible work organisation is also family-friendly
Andrea Hammermann / Jörg Schmidt / Oliver Stettes: Zur Ambivalenz flexiblen Arbeitens – Der Einfluss betrieblicher Familienfreundlichkeit
IW-Trends
German Economic Institute (IW)
Workplace Climate Index 2025: Employees give their workplace high marks
Most employees in Germany rate their working conditions positively. Between late May and early June in 2025 around 5,000 employees were asked to evaluate nine key characteristics of their workplace using school grades.
IW
Trust-based working hours and quality of work
In the coalition agreement for the 21st legislative period, the government intend to regulate working time recording in an unbureaucratic manner and continue to allow trust based working hours without time recording, in line with the European Working Time Directive.
IW