One in three employees is considering a job change in 2022 for reasons related to the office and the company’s work model: study

Workspaces have remained a decisive factor for Romanian employees in job selection decisions, as the health of offices remains key to regaining employee confidence and the pandemic shows no signs of coming to an end in the near future. Thus, employees’ expectations regarding their workspaces remain high, with more than a third saying they might consider a job change in 2022 based on reasons including safety within the office or their employer’s work system planned for next year, according to a survey of 1,100 employees nationwide conducted by Genesis Property between September and October this year.

More than 81 percent of respondents think they will be working in a hybrid or office-only system in 2022, while only 11 percent think their employer will still opt for the team to continue to work remotely starting January, although the pandemic continues to evolve and health risks remain high. In this context, more and more people feel the need for their office to adapt to today’s needs and provide them with a better and safer place to work.

Thus, more than half of employees in Romania (55 percent) are expecting a radical transformation of company offices next year,and most of them want to see an improvement in terms of sanitary systems (61.5 percent) and interior spaces specifically designed to foster well-being (47.5 percent) and safe team collaboration (37.8 percent). At the same time, two-thirds of employees would like to have more natural light inside workspaces and more green areas around buildings, two ways to boost creativity and reduce workplace stress.

“Nearly two years after the start of the pandemic, more and more Romanians have become more optimistic about their career prospects as the vaccination campaign accelerated this fall and a significant part returned at least partially to the office. Thus, almost three quarters of employees believe that 2022 will bring favorable developments in their working lives, a natural indicator of people’s growing confidence in the economy and in mitigating the effects of the pandemic next year”, says Teodor Stoica, Human Resources Manager at Genesis Property.

Nearly three quarters of employees believe their careers will improve in 2022. The outlook is also supported by their perception regarding the evolution of the company where they work, with 47.1 percent appreciating it will be favorable in 2022 and 24.4 percent expecting it to be very good, in a context in which 33 percent of them believe that Romania’s economy will also be on an upward trend next year.