But the company is taking its time: Deutsche Bahn is drastically restricting home offices

It doesn't affect everyone anyway and there is a lot of resistance internally: But Deutsche Bahn is significantly reducing the number of home offices. But the group is in no hurry to implement it.

According to a media report, Deutsche Bahn is significantly restricting its options for working from home. “In the future, three days of attendance per week should be the minimum standard for all employees whose jobs allow mobile working,” says an email from the group’s board of directors, which is available to “Spiegel”. The regulation should be implemented throughout the company by the end of 2027 at the latest. The specific design cannot look the same everywhere in a “diverse group” and is the responsibility of the respective companies.

When asked, a railway spokesman emphasized that the new regulation only affects around a third of the workforce. The rest “has always kept the railway business running for our customers on site every day.” The decision to increase presence is also “not an instrument for reducing staff”. Corresponding fears had been raised by Deutsche Bahn boss Evelyn Palla because of the ongoing restructuring of the company.

Previously, there was only a group-wide attendance requirement of one day per week. The regional subsidiary Regio has already increased its attendance requirement to three days per week. The board dealt with the project on August 25th, but did not initially make a decision. This is probably also due to the fact that there is considerable internal resistance to restricting home offices. Because beyond operational train operations, working from home has been widespread at Deutsche Bahn since the Corona crisis.

The results of a survey by the works council at the infrastructure subsidiary DB InfraGO, which are available to “Spiegel”, show how great the resistance to the new regulations is. Accordingly, 87 percent of those surveyed rated an ordered compulsory attendance as negative. Employees feared a deterioration in, among other things, personal productivity and the ability to plan their everyday work.