Abstract:
The COVID-19 pandemic led to a rapid and significant change in Germany’s work culture to work from home (WFH). This thesis highlights the importance of WFH for the German economy and examines whether there are generational differences in attitudes toward WFH. To do so, six hypotheses about generational effects on WFH variables are tested and explored using regression analysis and other statistical methods. For this purpose, I used data from the Global Survey of Working Arrangements of full-time employees aged 20 to 59 in Germany from 2021 and 2022 with 2,526 observations.
This thesis shows, first, that generational affiliation positively affects experienced WFH productivity relative to a priori expectations. Second, generational affiliation does not affect the days an individual WFH during the survey week. Third, generations positively influence businesses and employers’ plans for the number of WFH days after the pandemic. Then, the WFH days desired by workers are influenced by generational variables, as is the social acceptance of WFH. In addition, this thesis finds an influence of education level on many WFH variables. The results show that WFH is popular among younger generations in Germany.
