Hybrid working trends 2026 in Germany and the EU

Hybrid working trends: key takeaways

• Hybrid work is one of the most common working models in Germany and across the EU. Employees work from home an average of two days per week and use office days for coordination and collaboration.
• Two to three regular in office days have become standard. Teams set shared office days so colleagues can meet and projects can move forward.
• Fully remote work is becoming less common. Hybrid work remains the preferred model because home office and office days support different types of tasks.
• Companies use meeting windows and protected focus time to structure the day.
• Office space is being redesigned. Individual desks are reduced and new zones are added for focused work, collaboration, video calls and breaks.
• Desk sharing continues to grow because it creates space for these new zones and matches the irregular office attendance patterns of hybrid work.

Starting point: hybrid working trends 2025 and 2026

The use of hybrid work is far higher than before the pandemic and, after a short peak during the crisis years, has settled at a stable long term level.

The clear focus is on hybrid models that combine home office and office work with regular in office days. Fully remote work remains the exception.

Hybrid work in Germany

• According to Statistisches Bundesamt, twenty four percent of employed people in Germany worked from home at least occasionally in 2024, almost identical to 2023.
• Among those who used home office, twenty four percent worked exclusively from home, down from twenty six percent the year before. The sharp drop compared with 2021, when the figure was forty percent, shows that hybrid work rather than full remote work now dominates.
• Findings from the ifo Institut confirm this stability. In February 2025, twenty four point five percent of employees in Germany worked from home at least part of the time. This share has remained consistently around twenty five percent for more than two years.

Context:

• Germany is slightly above the EU average but below leading countries such as the Netherlands and the Nordic states.
• Hybrid work has become standard in medium sized and large companies, while the share remains much lower in small and medium sized enterprises and in sectors where remote work is not feasible..

Trends in hybrid work

Hybrid work in Germany and across the EU will be shaped mainly by set in office days, coordinated team routines and well established workflows. Office days are used deliberately for tasks that require personal interaction.

Companies are adapting their office space to hybrid work, introducing clear guidelines and investing in technology that supports working from different locations.

Set in office requirements

Many companies are introducing two to three required office days per week. These guidelines are meant to create reliability and ensure that teams do not only meet by chance. The teams themselves decide which days make the most sense, for example for project coordination or planning sessions.

For example, a team might decide that Monday and Wednesday are their shared office days. Monday is used to align on tasks and Wednesday is dedicated to collaborative project work. The remaining days can be chosen freely.

Office days as collaboration days

Going to the office increasingly serves specific purposes:

• project work
• onboarding
• in person meetings
• joint planning
• social connection

Employees come to the office because the team has scheduled workshops for that day or because a new colleague is being onboarded.

Guidelines for collaboration

Hybrid work makes it harder to sit together spontaneously and discuss plans, concepts or ideas. For many people a video call is not an adequate substitute.

• set periods with no meetings
• a clear requirement to document decisions
• a structured approach to meetings to keep them short
• guidelines for response times in chats and emails

A company might introduce daily focus hours from nine to twelve. During this time no meetings are allowed and no immediate chat responses are expected.

Changes to office space

Companies are redesigning their office space fundamentally under hybrid work conditions. Since many employees now come to the office only two or three days per week, fixed desks often remain unused.

This creates space for areas that match the type of work being done and give the office a clear advantage over the home office. The layout follows the activity based working principle.

Employees choose their work location based on the task at hand and may switch locations several times throughout the day. The main changes can be grouped into four areas.

Areas for focused work

Open plan offices often offer too little quiet. Companies therefore create zones intentionally designed for tasks that require concentration:

• individual workstations with visual and acoustic shielding
• use of sound absorbing materials such as textile surfaces, acoustic ceilings, partitions or large plants
• phone booths and small soundproof rooms for video calls or confidential conversations

These areas ensure that employees can work without interruptions and that office days become genuinely productive.

Areas for collaboration and exchange

Many employees come to the office to coordinate in person or work together on projects. This makes collaborative spaces much more important.

• open workshop areas with movable or wheeled tables, whiteboards and partition walls
• meeting rooms in various sizes equipped with video technology for hybrid meetings
• flexible team zones that can quickly adapt to different group sizes

Social and break areas

To keep the office an attractive place to work, companies are investing more in the overall quality of the environment.

• lounges, kitchen and café areas for conversations and breaks
• relaxation or movement zones such as fitness areas, quiet rooms or playful elements
• improved catering options including canteens, snacks or drinks

Adapting the technical setup

Hybrid work functions best when the technology supports it. This includes hardware, software and room equipment. Many companies have introduced systems that make switching between home office and the office easier.

• workplace, room, zone and parking space booking systems such as PULT
• storage solutions like lockers, since fixed desks are no longer assigned
• standardised ergonomic equipment at every workstation, for example height adjustable desks, docking stations and monitors
• reliable video conferencing technology
• shared document platforms
• data on office utilisation
• security solutions for working on the go

Example: An employee can book a desk for the next day via an app the evening before and, once in the office, has access to the same documents and tools as at home.

Using the hybrid working trend as an opportunity

Hybrid work almost inevitably leads to unused individual desks and creates an opportunity to redesign office space so it offers employees more than before.

When people are in the office only two or three days per week, many desks remain empty. The number of individual workstations can therefore be reduced, and the team shares a smaller pool of desks.

This frees up space that can be repurposed to add real value to the working day: areas for quiet focus, for collaboration and exchange, for video calls and for relaxation.

For meetings and teamwork, there are open areas with movable tables, whiteboards and video equipment. For breaks and social interaction, companies create lounges, kitchens and café zones. All of this becomes possible because a permanently assigned desk for every employee is no longer necessary.

The foundation for this is desk sharing. Under this concept, all workstations, zones and rooms are available to everyone. A booking system ensures that everything is allocated fairly.

In the PULT booking system, your employees reserve the space they want in advance and it is then assigned to them reliably:

• workstations, rooms and zones can be reserved reliably
• attendance in the office becomes visible automatically
• utilisation data shows how the office space is actually used
• check in happens automatically through PULT Presence

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