"We made a conscious decision to do this."

In Bad Goisern, Schunk focuses on attractiveness through flexibility.

"We made a conscious decision to further improve Schunk's attractiveness as an employer by making the work environment more flexible - and we did this even before the Corona crisis," says HR Manager Bettina Rimpfl.
The departments decide for themselves how on-site attendance is regulated. Some have a fixed attendance day for all team members, others take turns.
"This feeling of belonging together is very important to us and we want to reinforce it again in the future," says Rimpfl.

Bad Goisern in Austria is a stunningly beautiful spot: The town in the Salzkammergut region is located on picturesque Lake Hallstättersee and is surrounded by imposing mountains. Schunk is one of the largest employers here. However, the beautiful location in the midst of nature does not only have advantages: The area is rural, and the nearest larger towns are further away. "Our location is not so centrally located," says HR Manager Bettina Rimpfl. At Schunk, the question of how to attract good and motivated employees to Bad Goisern in the future and, at the same time, keep the staff's loyalty to the company high, had therefore been on the table for some time. "That's why we made a conscious decision to further improve Schunk's attractiveness as an employer by making the work environment more flexible - even before the Corona crisis."

With this to-do in mind, Rimpfl entered the company in March 2020 and launched a home office agreement. "In Austria, due to the legal situation, the home office portion must be individually defined in the employment contract," she explains. In principle, up to 50 percent home office is possible at Schunk in Bad Goisern, and up to 80 percent in special individual cases. "We looked at all functions and assessed how high the home office share can be, and recorded that in the function profile," says Rimpfl. Employees discuss this with their respective managers, who then determine the specific percentage.

"Employees are often more productive in the home office because you can concentrate better on the work."
Bettina Rimpfl

This flexibilization of the working environment was well received by the employees - many of them had already wanted to work at home part of the time. However, Rimpfl has observed that this is a completely individual decision that cannot be determined by age or tasks. For employees in production, home office is naturally only possible to a limited extent; of the approximately 200 employees, about half have a corresponding contract.

Pandemic brought momentum to flexibilization

No sooner had Rimpfl started her job at Schunk than the Corona pandemic hit. "That was not the reason for the flexibilization of the working environment at the Bad Goisern site, but of course accelerated the development a lot," she looks back. Due to the Corona regulations, employees were required to work in a home office whenever possible. The existing company agreement on flextime also applies to the home office: According to this, employees must work in the time frame from 6:30 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. and record their working hours accordingly. Schunk Carbon Technology has also created the conditions for home office in terms of technology and equipped employees with laptops.

In individual departments, space at the site had already become scarce for construction reasons - so the fact that employees now work partly in a home office was a good fit here. Some of the workstations available on site can even be booked online. "Basically, we want to make a workstation available to all employees, because that is very important to our employees," says Rimpfl.

The departments decide for themselves how on-site attendance is regulated. Some have a fixed attendance day for all team members, others alternate. "There are different models. Managers discuss this with their teams and then determine it," says Rimpfl.

Flexibilization has many advantages, but also disadvantages

Overall, the experience in Bad Goisern with the flexible working environment has been good. "In my impression, employees are often more productive in the home office because you can concentrate better on the work."

Admittedly, there are also disadvantages. "We already see that some employees get a distance from the company and the personal contact between employees is missing after all, because this also contributes significantly to job satisfaction," Rimpfl observes. In the past, for example, employees used to do a lot of things together outside of work; that has fallen asleep over Corona. "This feeling of belonging together is very important to us and we want to reinforce it again in the future, for example with our summer party."