40% of Romanian employees would change jobs if asked to return to office, survey shows

Four out of ten employees in Romania would start looking for another job if their employer would ask them to work mainly in the office, according to a new survey.

Despite the pandemic dying down, many Romanian employees still prefer to work from home. Data centralized by Undelucram.ro, Romania's largest community of employees, shows that the majority of employees questioned (61%) work from home between 3 to 5 days a week. 72% say that they want to continue doing so, while only 28% would like to return to the office and work from there most of the time.

Those who prefer to work from home chose this way of working because they find it more efficient (62% of employees) or because they can also take care of family and home during working hours (57%). Around 13% say they like working from home because it allows them to have another job.

Around 65% of employees would only return to the office if the company required it. Half of the respondents would work from the office to socialize, and 27% for efficiency reasons.

However, if the company asked them to work 3-5 days a week from the office, 54% would not agree, and about 40% of them would start looking for another job. 25% would comply with the decision to go to the office because they have no alternatives.

83% of the HR experts say they have discussed this year within the department or with the company management the idea of recalling employees to work mainly from the office. The vast majority (90%) also say that management supports a balance between working in the office and working from home.

The main concerns of HR specialists regarding remote work are: the fact that employees no longer communicate as well with each other, which can affect efficiency (33%), the tendency for employees to no longer want to work from the office (29%), employee efficiency (24%), maintaining employee motivation (24%), the fact that HR initiatives are no longer visible enough (10%), and the fact that there is an economic crisis and employees need to be more united and efficient, but they do not want to return to the office (8%).

“Although the pandemic has passed, we see its effects very strongly on the labor market. Specifically, more than 60% continue to work from home and would only return to the office if asked to do so,” said Costin Tudor, founder and CEO of Undelucram.

“We notice that for over 65% of HR specialists, the main concerns regarding remote work are related to efficiency. Probably the solution is for employers to be as attentive as possible to the well-being of employees and to find new methods of motivating and retaining employees continuously,” he added.

2,813 employees and 537 HR experts responded to the Undelucram survey.