Uberisation of Private Homes? Workplace Location and the Distribution of Workplace Costs Between Employers and Employees – the German Case

Abstract

Digitalisation and the COVID-19 pandemic have increased the use of telework. Employees often use private resources for working from home (WFH). However, we know little about how employers and employees divide telework-related workplace costs, whether employees are burdened with workplace costs in a trend of 'Uberisation of private homes', or whether there are legal or economic reasons to have employees bear the workplace cost. We first analyse Germany's legal framework. Second, we estimate the compositions and levels of workplace costs in different scenarios. We then analyse the allocation of workplace costs from the perspectives of the de facto legal situation, risk allocation and preference matching. We show that, for the most common telework types, the assumption of costs is insufficiently regulated. In practice, there is often only an implicit understanding that employees bear the workplace costs – which runs partly against the legal framework. Cost assumption by employees is efficient only in special conditions – if the employee is free to decide on workplace location and thus whether telework is voluntary. We advocate an obligation to conclude an agreement on whether the employer or the employee decides on the workplace location, whether the employer will reimburse (parts of) the workplace costs, and, if so, which parts of the costs will be borne. Such an agreement would make workplace cost negotiation mandatory, reduce uncertainty, and help improve preference matching, thereby increasing the efficiency of spatial workplace organisation.