Employees working in Bucharest spend 45 minutes on average from home to office where they would like to have more eating, fitness and shopping options, study shows

The employees working in modern offices in Bucharest spend an average of 46 minutes between home and work, while 52 percent of them consider the commuting time to be long or too long, according to a study by the real estate consultancy company Cushman & Wakefield Echinox.

The average distance between home and work is 10.7 kilometres, therefore the average commuting speed at peak hours is about 14 kilometres per hour, in this study being included both the employees who use their personal or work car, and the ones who use public transport or alternative means of transport.

More than half (54 percent) of the employees use the metro, 38 percent use the car, and a significant number of respondents need more means of transport to get to work.

At the office, 22 percent of the respondents declare themselves dissatisfied with the facilities (services, restaurants, leisure facilities) in the area, while 47 percent consider that the offer could be improved, with the most demanding functions being those in the restaurant area and cafes (37 percent), fitness centres (26 percent) and supermarkets (24 percent).

If the employees could choose their office location, half of them would prefer to work in the Centre,  Tineretului – Unirii – Universitate (31 percent), and CBD, Piaţa Victoriei – Aviatorilor (19 percent). The other preferred areas are Military – Drumul Taberei (16 percent) and Piaţa Muncii – Pallady – Pantelimon (13 percent), districts with a smaller office stock, but with a high density of the population.

The time spent in traffic also reflects in the employees’ desire to work from the office or not – if there would be complete freedom in choosing the place to work, only 45 percent of the time would be spent in an office, while the rest of the program would be assigned to work from home (35 percent), in a coworking space (10 percent) or an unconventional space, such as a cafe or the food-court (10 percent).

However, in the process of selecting the job, the most important criteria taken into account are the salary and the job description, followed by the benefits package and the flexibility of the working hours.