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 Mon, 31. May. 2021   Khodijah, Anna

City of Duisburg and the SITM chair successfully finish the project "Wissenschaftliche Begleitung des Einsatzes der mobilen Arbeit in der Stadtverwaltung Duisburg".

Since the beginning of 2019, the city of Duisburg has been implementing flexible working ("mobile working") as part of the city’s digitalization initiatives. As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, this mobile working has become popular in the past years, which is continuing until today. Given the considerable changes to employees’ everyday working life as well as technical and social challenges, the successful implementation of the new form of work depends decisively on the acceptance of employees and managers. The city was therefore very keen to obtain feedback from its employees on their opinions and experiences with mobile working.

For this reason, the city of Duisburg, in cooperation with the Chair of Information Systems and Strategic IT Management at the University of Duisburg-Essen (UDE), conducted a project to evaluate employee satisfaction and acceptance with regard to mobile working. Topics of the evaluation were, among others, work-life balance, satisfaction, and motivation. The aim of the project was to obtain an assessment of the areas in which mobile working already works well and where there is still potential for improvement.  In this way, approaches for effective change management and remaining challenges could be identified, which can then be addressed and implemented step by step.

Project team members from the city of Duisburg are Ms. Birgit Nellen, Ms. Janine Schmidt, and Ms. Maren Thommes. From the UDE, Prof. Frederik Ahlemann, Anna Khodijah (project manager), Alexandar Schkolski, Phil Gonserkewitz, and Erik Karger were part of the project team.

The evaluation was conducted through a survey of employees and managers based on interviews and online questionnaires in September and October 2020.

The study revealed that 77% of respondents are satisfied with mobile working. 84% of respondents stated that mobile working increases their quality of life; 91% of respondents also agreed with the statement that mobile working makes the City of Duisburg more attractive as an employer. The results of the survey were initially presented within the Duisburg city administration and will be published soon. A second run of the project will also take place in 2022 for further evaluation.