Trust instead of control: leading remote teams working from home

A quarter work from home

In 2025, 25 per cent of people in employment in Germany worked from home at least occasionally. The Federal Statistical Office thus reports the same figure as in the pandemic year of 2021. Before coronavirus, it was 13 per cent. Just under a quarter of those working from home do so exclusively, while 46 per cent do so on fewer than half of their working days. At companies with 250 or more employees the share is 35 per cent, at small firms 19 per cent.

The ifo Institute arrives at a similar picture in its business survey: 24.4 per cent in August 2025, almost unchanged since 2022. In the institute's assessment, the return-to-office moves by individual corporations remain isolated cases. According to a Bitkom survey of 602 companies, 58 per cent allow mobile working for at least part of their workforce. Leading at a distance is therefore part of everyday life at many companies. The question is no longer whether the team works from home, but how it is led.

Mandatory office attendance as a signal of control

Even so, some employers are calling their people back. At the end of 2025, the WSI of the Hans Böckler Foundation surveyed around 2,600 people in employment. A third of those with mobile working arrangements had been told to work from home less, on average three days a week in the office. How those affected read this is unambiguous: just under 62 per cent suspect an interest in control, and 55 per cent a lack of trust on the employer's part. On a scale from 0 to 10, they rated the requirement at 4.0 on average, somewhat better where a reason was given than where none was. Job satisfaction is lower where such requirements exist than where they do not, and one in five does not comply with the instruction at all.

Companies sense this. In the Bitkom survey, 46 per cent suspect that return-to-office moves are aimed at getting rid of unmotivated staff. The Konstanz home office study by the University of Konstanz offers an indication of this: where employees fear for their jobs, 33 per cent report stricter attendance requirements, compared with 19 per cent across all respondents. The researchers interpret this as an instrument for indirect headcount reduction. Attendance is required on all five days at only 8 per cent of companies.

It is also revealing who demands attendance. The higher the management level, the more critical the attitude towards mobile working: 32 per cent of members of executive management would like more mandatory office attendance, but only 16 per cent of junior managers, who lead their teams at a distance day to day. And the scepticism is fading. In 2025, 24 per cent of managers still believed that mobile working seriously harms communication; the year before it was 43 per cent.

Exhaustion instead of performance

Behind mandatory attendance lies the assumption that being present raises productivity. The Konstanz data do not support it. In 2025, employees at companies with flexible rules reported performance an average of five per cent higher than those at companies with stricter attendance requirements. Emotional exhaustion, by contrast, was significantly higher at the attendance-focused companies. The researchers only capture self-assessments, however, not objective performance data. At Fraunhofer IAO, 80 per cent of around 2,400 respondents say they work more productively under a hybrid model.

That does not make the office redundant. The ifo economist Jean-Victor Alipour points to studies according to which full-time home working harms productivity in the long run, above all for inexperienced staff. A few days in the office per week offset this, provided the experienced colleagues are in the office then too. The dispute over the number of office days can therefore be settled. The difficulties of leading at a distance lie elsewhere.

What leading at a distance requires

The Fraunhofer study "Beyond Hybrid Work" shows where the problems are. 84.5 per cent of respondents are in regular contact with their line manager, and 78 per cent feel free to organise their own work. At the same time, just under half say that excessive workloads within the team go unnoticed. 30 per cent miss support with individual concerns, 29 per cent find it hard to make new contacts, and almost half feel that online meetings leave them with little control over their own time. Contact with the boss therefore exists, but it does not extend as far as the strain on the individual.

Monitoring tools do not close this gap. In an earlier Fraunhofer survey of around 400 companies, very few introduced instruments for monitoring performance, and only 2 per cent adjusted the way they measure productivity. Employees wanted transparency in how tasks are distributed rather than more surveillance. The researchers recommend building a culture of trust and letting managers grow into leading hybrid teams, instead of introducing new control mechanisms.

This fits with the Gallup Engagement Index 2025. Only 10 per cent of employees in Germany feel strongly attached to their employer, 77 per cent only slightly. Gallup calls leadership the bottleneck and describes what good managers do: clarify expectations, set goals, support development, give regular feedback. None of this requires the employee to be sitting at the next desk.

Narrow limits on surveillance

Anyone who nonetheless prefers to monitor quickly runs into legal limits. The employer may and must record working time, including when staff work from home, and may evaluate login data for this purpose. Continuous surveillance of the working day, by contrast, is not permitted. Programmes that log keystrokes or take screenshots at regular intervals are only allowed where there is a specific suspicion of a criminal offence or a serious breach of duty. Where a works council exists, it has a co-determination right in relation to technical monitoring devices.

How monitoring is received was shown by a Bitkom survey of employees back in 2023: 24 per cent said their employer had become more distrustful and wanted to monitor performance more closely, compared with 15 per cent the year before. At the same time, 53 per cent reported a more cooperative leadership style, with managers responding more to their employees' needs. Both routes are open. The figures from five years of home working argue for the second.