Office is necessary to keep work-life balance
Arkadiusz Rudzki
Executive Vice President Leasing & Sales at Skanska Commercial Development Europe
Because I am working in the real estate industry, it’s somehow obvious that I strongly believe in the idea of offices. COVID motivated me and my team to say: “Ok, we need to check what other people think because they are working almost one year from the home so maybe they don’t need offices anymore?”. This disturbing thought pushed us to organize a study in four countries in Central and Eastern Europe – Poland, the Czech Republic, Romania and Hungary. The main aim was to analyze the attitudes of office workers to work from home vs working in the office. So, do you want to know what the study proved?
More than 80% of respondents go to the office
Dear friends from the office real estate industry, we can breathe a sigh of relief – people still want to have offices, go to offices and what is more important, they need them to keep a work-life balance. Our study shows that almost 50% of the respondents go to the office every day! Poles are on the top – because in Poland it is 54%. Additionally, 32% of all respondents go to the office in the hybrid model (for example, 2-3 times a week, in shifts, or from time to time).
People have good home conditions but...
About 2/3 of all the respondents have good working conditions at home (it means that they have their own room to work), however only 1/5 say that working from home is more effective. The study proves our suspicions that problems with effectiveness of working at home concern mostly people working in a team and those who must share room with other adults or kids. The office is an essential part of teamwork – more than 50% of respondents agree that they are less effective at home.
The biggest disadvantages of working from home
Respondents from each of the surveyed countries agree that the biggest drawback of remote work is the fact that it’s hard to distinguish between private and business life. More than 40% of respondents from Poland, Hungary and Romania indicated it. The interesting thing is that in the Czech Republic only 35% of the respondents pointed this out.
Another inconvenience is a lack of meetings and face-to-face conversations. Then we have a limited social life - for Romanians and Hungarians it’s a huge problem. 40% of respondents from both countries indicated this as a disadvantage. Poles are less social because only 18% complain about that.
Office is a safe place!
2/3 of all office workers consider the office as a safe place to work in. The office is “definitely safe” or “rather safe” for: 71% of Poles, 70% of Czechs, 64% of Hungarians and 57% of Romanians. We are glad that people still perceive offices as safe, and certificates like the WELL Health-Safety Rating, which we have received for our 8 properties in CEE, strengthen this confidence (the research shows that more than half of all the respondents say, that certificate would positively influence their sense of security at the workplace).
Office is an important part of company culture
Despite the pandemic, we can clearly see the undeniably important role of the office space in the working life of many people. This concerns not only technical aspects, like direct access to equipment or the ability to discuss various matters with co-workers face to face. As it can be seen, above all, working from the office is a natural way for the employees to set and maintain a healthy line between their career and private life. Thus, the possibility to go to the office is a valuable part of everyday life, enabling workers to keep up their effectiveness, creativity and satisfaction from work, which constitute key factors.
About the study: the study was conducted by the research and analytical company Zymetria on behalf of Skanska, the biggest office developer in Europe. As part of the quantitative online survey using the CAWI method, responses were collected from 1,200 office workers in four countries – Poland, Romania, the Czech Republic and Hungary.
Regional Director Partnership Growth CEE at IWG plc | Regus | SPACES | HQ
3 年Thank You for that article, providing real data from real market in real time.
Some aspects will stay, some will change. We need offices for sure, but the way we work is changing, Covid pandemic only speeded it up. We can find some similarity in retail , between e-commerce and brick and mortal. Covid speeds the changes. Shopping Centers will survive as well, but probably we will use them for more different needs, than just shopping, and many of them are unknown today. Same with offices.
GBS optimization, cross-border business, international location strategy expert
3 年Agree Arkadiusz, Interactions with BSC/GBS leads show that if people spend the majority of their days working, the humans species is not at all ready to do this in ??splendid isolation??. Its needs for social interaction are just too manifest. Certainly Mark Zuckerberg would agree. Would the future of corporate workspaces be more about providing space for social interaction, about developing a ??corporate glue?? than about proving a space to work? Curious to see what the next few years will bring. Allow me to poise that any change will not be radical/short term. For as much as we are a social species, we have demonstrated to adapt cautiously. Unless forced to do otherwise by hazards.
Managing Partner at Cornerstone Partners
3 年Arek, investment banks in the US force people back to offices. That’s it. People must go back to offices otherwise the efficiency will drop and mental damage will be beyond repair..