Survey: Almost half of Romanian employees currently working exclusively at the office
Almost half (46%) of employees in Romania are currently working exclusively from the office, while nearly 20% continue to work fully remotely, and the rest have a hybrid schedule. However, 6 out of 10 candidates would not accept a job in a company that does not allow remote or hybrid work, according to an eJobs survey.
2022 was the year when employees started to return to office work after two years in which remote work was the rule. Roughly 46.1% of employees are currently working exclusively from the company's headquarters, according to the most recent survey conducted by eJobs Romania.
Only 18.4% are still working entirely from home, while the rest split their schedule between home and office, as follows: 18.8% have a hybrid schedule based on a company structure, 13.7% have to come to the office but have the freedom to decide how many days they work from home and how many from the office, and 3% only come to the office for meetings and sessions.
"We were the country in Europe with the lowest opening of employers to remote work at the beginning of 2020. Now, this working style has entered a form of normality in our country as well, and in almost all fields of activity,” said Ana Calugaru, Head of Communications at eJobs, the largest online recruitment platform in Romania, in a press release.
“Over 30,000 remote jobs were posted last year, 29.4% more than in 2021 and 490% more than in 2019. From the beginning of this year until now we already have more than 3,000 remote jobs posted, which is 10% of the total. This means that employers remain flexible in this regard, but this flexibility is rather manifested in the direction of accepting a hybrid work schedule rather than a completely remote one,” she added.
More than half of the participants in the survey say that they work at least five days a month from the office. 14.3% come to the company's headquarters only once a month, 9% twice, 7.1% three times, and 12.4% work from the office four days a month.
When asked about the changes they would like to make this year regarding how they work, the majority (28.3%) answered that they want to work in a hybrid way, but that they want to be the ones who decide how many days they will come to the office. 23.6% want to work exclusively from home, while 20.1% want to increase the number of days they work remotely.
Only 1.5% are at the opposite end and intend to work more from the office. Still, 22.6% have decided that in 2023 they will only work from the company's headquarters.
Roughly 40% of those in the latter two categories say that the decision to return to the office or to work more days in the office was made by the employer. 59.6%, on the other hand, confess that they no longer feel comfortable working from home and want to make a change.
"All the surveys we have done on this subject show that there are also disadvantages that employees are aware of and that has led many to give up working only from home. Acute feelings of alienation, lack of socialization with colleagues, the dissolution of a clear boundary between personal and professional life are just some of the reasons why we see that the most sought-after work style today is not necessarily remote, but hybrid," explains Ana Calugaru.
This type of employer flexibility has also become a criterion that candidates take into account when it comes to looking for a new job. Three out of five survey participants claim that they would no longer work for a company that does not accept remote or hybrid work. 26.6% of respondents say that this is the aspect that would weigh the most in the decision to accept a new job offer. For 55.5%, the most important thing is the salary.
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