Are Employers Permitted To Mandate Home Office Work?

Today's working world has realized that home offices can entail numerous advantages both for employees and for employers. This not only leads to the question of whether employees have a legal right to working from a home office ( Legal claim to home office?), but courts recently also had to decide whether the employer's right to issue instructions includes whether home office work could be mandated for employees (Berlin-Brandenburg State Labor Court, October 10, 2018, Case 17 Sa 562/18). In its ruling, the State Labor Court answered this question to the effect that the right to issue instructions under an employment contract in accordance with Section 106 Industrial Code did not also include the right to unilaterally obligate the employee to perform the work in a home office – which in the specific case was yet to be set up.