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Real estate: Analysis: Demand for office buildings and their renting costs might drop
Demand for office buildings and their renting costs may go down as there have been reductions of office areas as a result of implementing social distancing measures, according to an analysis of XTB Romania brokerage house which presents advantages and disadvantages of work from home versus working in offices.
“For companies, the decision to make a transition from working in offices and working from home is a way of reducing costs. Besides costs with rent, ensuring a high number of facilities to set up a welcoming working area for staff brings along certain costs. Working from home transfers most of the operational costs of the company to the employee,” says Radu Puiu, research analyst at XTB Romania.
Time won from eliminating commuting is used for other aspects of life. For instance, some of the time recovered was transferred to building a healthier life style. However, work from home also has disadvantages. In Romania, 75% of employees lack physical interaction with work mates during a work day and for 67% the fact that there is a net delimitation between office and personal lives is a challenge.
Relaxed conditions brought about the question whether people will go back to office work even in fields of activity allowing working from home. In this respect company managers were placed in a difficult situation. After analyzing options, most of them decided to extend the period of work from home even for an undetermined period of time.
Moreover, employee productivity does not seem to be a problem. The study shows that employees working from a distance work 1.4 days more per month than those who work in an office, which means three additional work weeks in a year.
This aspect was seen at national level, where about 23% of participants in an analysis made by Colliers International declared they are more efficient. Moreover, certain companies, especially in the IT field, felt an increase of productivity and many of them consider letting employees to work from home even when the sanitary crisis is over.