What this interview is about:
As Director of the Institute for New Work and Coaching, Prof. Dr Carsten Schermuly has for many years been responsible for the New Work Barometer, which identifies and analyses current trends in the world of work. He has also been named one of the “40 leading HR figures of 2025” by the editorial team of “Personalmagazin”. In an interview, he spoke to us about New Work and psychological empowerment.
Professor Schermuly, congratulations! How did you feel about receiving this special honour from “Personalmagazin”?
Carsten Schermuly: I was delighted and feel very honoured that our HR research at SRH University is viewed so positively. However, I don’t see this as an award for me personally, but rather as a tribute to the work carried out at our institute. Our PhD students produce excellent work every day, which we get published in international peer-reviewed journals.
The award shows that your voice carries weight – especially when it comes to the transformation of the world of work. The initial findings of the New Work Barometer 2025 have just been published – what do you consider to be the most exciting insights?
Carsten Schermuly: I find it interesting that, despite the headwinds currently facing some New Work topics in the media, the measures are being implemented fairly consistently. Agile project work and working from home, in particular, are practices that are here to stay, even if some companies are ordering their staff back into the office. Our research shows that a blanket return-to-office policy does not make sense. Working from home actually seems to correlate slightly positively with organisational success, and it appears to be particularly efficient when teams can decide for themselves how they work together.
How do you interpret the decline in the buzzwords surrounding New Work – is this a sign of maturity?
Carsten Schermuly: I wrote the book “New Work Dystopia” a few years ago. In it, I tried to highlight the downsides of the New Work hype. The fact that some New Work consultants have now left the field is good for practice, but also for our research. It is now easier to engage seriously with the topic. Because the challenges remain. An increasingly complex and volatile external world must be reflected by a complex organisational internal world.
What does this mean in concrete terms for HR departments?
Carsten Schermuly: Frithjof Bergmann introduced the term ‘New Work’ into the literature in the 1980s and wanted work to become something that empowers people. We psychologists translate this using the term ‘psychological empowerment’. Psychological empowerment comprises four perceptions of one’s role at work. People with a high level of empowerment perceive a great deal of meaning, competence, self-determination and influence. We have demonstrated in numerous studies that psychological empowerment is associated with greater job satisfaction and performance, but also with lower levels of psychological strain and staff turnover. Anyone who wants to engage seriously with New Work should therefore seek to strengthen the experience of empowerment. However, there are definite shortcomings in this area, which we see in the Barometer. When organisations adopt New Work, they often grant self-determination, but they do not simultaneously delegate influence and power.
Being sent off to fend for oneself without any power can lead to problems.
One final question: if you could make one wish for the world of work in 2026, what would it be?
Carsten Schermuly: My greatest wish would be that we do not allow the authoritarian tendencies we are currently seeing in global politics to take such a strong hold within companies. The authoritarian exercise of power leads to helplessness, poorer knowledge sharing and, in the long term, to more corruption. We should spare ourselves that.
