CBRE Working from home survey: 64 percent miss conversations with colleagues, 61 percent face the lack of work-life balance

During the COVID-19 lockdown, CBRE, leading real estate consultancy company, has conducted a large-scale study about working from home experience by asking a total of 1,200 employees in Romania, the CEE and SEE regions.

Compared to the regular office routine, 64 percent of the over 1,200 respondents from CEE and SEE regions miss the chats with working mates, feeling isolated and 61 percent have trouble establish a clear separation between work and home, struggling with work-life balance. Around 55 percent suffer not seeing other faces while 51 percent miss in person meetings and 43 percent mention launches with colleagues as one of top things missed about the workplace environment.

In Romania, working from home will not be an option for 33 percent of the responders versus 38 percent which intend to ask to work from home at least once a week, shows the CBRE Research survey. According to the official data, Romania has the smallest rate of working from home, below 1 percent. The fact that only around 7 percent of respondents would reject the employer’s desire for more home office use could further increase both the attractiveness and space efficiency of workplace concepts.

The average rate of persons working from home is 3.9 percent from total employment volume, meaning approx. 9.00 million. employees, considering the Eurostat data for the countries part of CEE & SEE regions that answered the CBRE Research survey. The country with the largest share of persons familiarised with working from home is Austria, 9.9 percent from total employed persons, in opposition with countries such as Bulgaria and Romania where rates of 0.5 percent and 0.8 percent are encountered.