This trend invades Switzerland

Laptop on and off the slopes: More and more employees are fulfilling this dream in their home office times. This is indicated by the new numbers from the online service E-domizil, available from CH Media. The number of passengers was counted by 37 per cent last year. 39 percent more bookings were recorded in 2020 compared to 2019.

More and more people in Switzerland are using holiday accommodation as an alternative to working from home. The pandemic has eliminated the duty to be in the office. “The separation between the world of work and leisure is becoming increasingly obsolete,” she said in a statement.

«Rent Your Vacation Home»

Since 2019, the number of single traveler bookings has doubled. They also increasingly traveled outside major travel periods. The largest number of single travelers is found in September and October. Last year they had an above average stay at the holiday resort – and there were “too many inquiries about holiday homes with strong WIFI and well-appointed workplaces”.

“The high demand has led to an unprecedented shortage of supplies at peak times,” the statement said. Therefore, E-Domizil’s Managing Director Marcel Mick is not inviting second home owners to leave their vacation homes when they are empty.

Swiss companies are conservative

The confusion between work and vacation (leave) is also called “work”. However, the relatively young trend may soon fade again if the Federal Reserve decides on Wednesday to raise home office requirements from Feb. 16, as expected.

Because Swiss companies don’t like working from home. You should be able to request that your employees return to the office more frequently when working from home is no longer mandatory. This is indicated by data from a study conducted by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development and the workplace in reality.

Switzerland is below average

I have examined the global acceptance and prevalence of working from home in companies. It’s “a trend that looks set to hold after the pandemic.” In most countries, the proportion of home offices has increased significantly. The average rate in the 20 countries surveyed has more than tripled since the start of the pandemic.

The average proportion of job advertisements where the home office option was referenced was 7.5 percent in September 2021. In Switzerland it was significantly lower at 7.08 percent (see chart).

Companies in Poland, Spain, Austria or Germany frequently rely on working from home. As the study shows, Switzerland has not been able to grow in terms of the home office either – quite the contrary. This is illustrated by comparing job postings to the home office reference in 2019 with those that were in place during the pandemic. In Switzerland, the share increased by just over two percentage points.

This places Switzerland 15th out of 20 in terms of home office growth, only in New Zealand, Sweden, Belgium, Ireland and Japan, where there is practically no home office, was this value lower. In Spain, Ireland or Canada, the share of ads increased by more than 6 percentage points.

Catalyst is missing

This is surprising at first glance, given that Switzerland, with its large service sector, is destined to work outside the office. The reason may lie elsewhere. According to the study, travel restrictions in the wake of the pandemic act as an incentive to work from home: Many companies only start working from home when forced to do so.

In most countries, the ratio did not drop much when the measures were relaxed. This may indicate that employers and employees are beginning to appreciate the benefits of working from home. In Switzerland, where relatively mild restrictions prevailed and the commitment to working from home difficult to control or consistently represented, this catalyst may have been somewhat missing – and many companies were not even able to have to seriously experiment with working at home.