In Romania most companies seem to have discarded remote work. Micromanaging culture is strong here so many bosses believe only if they can see you sitting at your desk you’re being productive. It’s generally considered that remote workers either have time to work whenever they are asked, no matter how late, or that people do nothing when they work from home.
There are companies who’ve switched to a hybrid model where you can work from home 2 days a week but it’s not that common.
I’ve been trying to switch jobs for months and I have almost no remote work options with local companies.
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My job never implemented remote work as it by nature requires us to be on site.
But to take three people I know as example:
* The first person routinely handles classified documents. She has never been allowed to work remotely.
* The second person handles technical tests. He could work remotely when writing reports, but tests had to be done on-site. Today they have returned to on-site full-time.
* The third person is working with graphic design. She used to work remotely during 2020 to 2022, but now they has to be on-site Mondays and Fridays.
So I would say that while many could work remotely during 2020–2022, today most have returned to work.
I think it’s still not settled in Germany. Many where asked to return, at least for 1-2 days per week, but many others (like me) still do not have any hard requirement to return to the office.
Seems to come down to company culture in the end (talking of course about office jobs). Well, if my boss knows what’s good for them, they won’t ask us to return. I was at the office last week and no-one could get any work done in all that noise and many left to go home during lunch break.
Im a programmer in Italy and we still are going quite strong id say, there are quite a lot of places that hire from remote, tho many try to have people come in maybe twice a month, id say that still classifies.
The company I work for raved about how effective and productive we were when doing remote work.
Then we moved to a hybrid 2 days a week model, which seemed good and gave people enough flexibility.
Now they say that it’s better if we go back into the office 4 days a week because “reasons”.
It’s been on hold because of Covid but will likely end soon.
But because of Tax reasons any employee of a Swiss based company must work at least 80% of their hours within Switzerland.
The frontaliers (cross border residents) in my company are throwing a temper tantrum about this, but it is what it is.
Before the pandemic my employer offered wfh only if you really needed it. Applying was a tedious process few bothered with. Then they couldn’t send us home fast enough and realized that we’re even more productive at home.
So they changed their policy to a permanent right for everyone, at least for a certain percentage of your time. If you work full-time you’re supposed to be minimum 2 days per week in the office. Exceptions apply for those coworkers whose jobs require them to be on site, or coworkers who don’t follow the wfh rules.
Our employer had already started with electronic file systems etc, so the technical side wasn’t an issue even for confidential customer data.
For office-workers, the hybrid model of 50/50 is here to stay, as most organisations have adopted it. In the current job market, organisations that try to force their employees to come back to the office (near-)fulltime will have a difficult time finding/retaining staff. There’s also a fair number of organisations that allow their employees more freedom, e.g. one day per week or even 1-2 days per month going back to the office.
As a civil servant, I receive 2.15 euro’s per day for working from home.
It used to be a “work from home if you need to” kinda deal before covid and then in covid we went 100% remote over night. At some point they held a poll about how many days in the office per week we’d prefer and the whole IT voted for 0 days. So I guess now they’re scared to send us back into the office because I have only been in the office occasionally since march 2020.
My employer and my girlfriends (both large multinationals) are introducing new rules, where everyone is supposed to be at the office 2 or 3 days a week. People arent really doing it tho and our immediate supervisors dont really care much either. Its mostly the country leadership (probably under pressure from their bosses outside switzerland) who are pushing for this.
Ironically our office doesnt even have enough shared desks for everybody to actually be there 3 times a week.
I dont see the standard from pre covid, when everyone was essentially always at the office, ever coming back. My best guess is, its probably going to end up at some kind of 50/50 model.
My company returned to 2 day of remote + 3 from office.
Many of the biggest company in the city have similar rules. Our time and material suppliers are full remote (suggested working from our company only 1 day at month )
In my former job they tried to get people back to the office 5 days per month last year, then changed the policy to only attending special events, and with two weeks warning. They had talked about 2 days per week at the office before that, but apparently they had trouble recruiting talent.
In my job search from what I’ve seen most jobs are hybrid 3 days home/2 days office, although there are many full remote as well. The offer I finally accepted is 1 day per week office, which I find reasonable.
Same in Hungary. Friggin’ companies start to act like it was never a thing.
The workers and unions are silent and cowed into obediance and the politicians never even touched the subject. It’s a disgrace if you ask me.
both in Poland and Ireland seems to be same – people got used to, but some companies try to force people back in mostly introducing some flex models where you need to show up in office at least X amount of times per week
/edit: fresh rant thread about it from r/irleand: [Irish employers that force people with WFH type jobs into the office are absolute wankers. Change my opinion.](https://old.reddit.com/r/ireland/comments/12x7p0a/irish_employers_that_force_people_with_wfh_type/)
My job can’t be done remotely so it never affected me but other people at my place of work do have a hybrid pattern, with x-days a week onsite. Some departments were very resistant to coming back onsite at all.
I’ve got some friends who are hybrid and some who are fully remote. One friend managed to get another remote job a few months back which pays so much more it’s enough to lead to a full on change in living standards. She has to visit the office something like twice a year, but they’re only down in north east England anyway so it’s not too bad.
Depends on a company. My employer is very flexible in that regard and we can work from office or from home as we see fit. I guess it helps that many do choose to work from office due to a convenient location + good work conditions compared to what many have at home.
In norway (public sector office) we can have on average one day at home a week over the year. It depends on the head of department, but from what I hear from other union reps is that this is more or less the standard practice. It depends a bit on the head of department, but in general the flexibility is much greater now. My closest boss is cool, so I can take home office when I want as long as I put it in my calender, and ofc given there is no meetings in person. If you want to have a fixed day off you need to sign an agreement, but in general it is no hassle.
From what I hear from my friends in private or semi private companies is that they have Even more flex.
Imo I think we have a good balance, at least in my biz it is required to be in the office fairly often, but we are now at the point where noone bats an eye if someone is away. But like I said it is very dependent on the closest boss. As a union rep I sit in when we recruit and most Ask about the policy, so the managers know very well that people will not work for what we can pay them unless they have some degree of flexibility.
The general rule is 3 days remote and 2 days in the office per week, unless exempt. I’m surprised to hear that in Romania they put you back into the offices, because most of our Romanians are 80-100% time remote workers.
A lot of the office work should be switched to full remote, honestly, but it would reveal even more glaring disparity and paucity of necessary public facility and inadequacy of a lot of what passes for real estate for anything but sleeping and again barely so.
Covid already showed that, and it’s only going to gain momentum. THe full-on-office is never coming back as it’s essentially an obsolete and costly model of work, not offering flexibility and consuming too much resources in a future 360 economy.
Job listings (that I’ve seen) in Scotland are mostly advertising partly remote work, with mandatory 1-2 days a week in the office, or completely remote work which they then backtrack on once you reach interview stage.
If you have an in-demand job like my partner does, it’s fairly easy to demand completely remote work. The company he’s currently at doesn’t have any in-office requirements but it’s encouraged. Most other people I know at large companies also don’t have any requirements to go in; pretty much everyone works solely from home.
A lot of office work is still remote in the UK. My job is mostly remote with occasional trips into the office. Jobs where I work are advertised as WFH unless they’re high managerial roles and even then most of them work from home.
Depands on the emoyeer. At my work 4 days a month from the office are a requirement of lowered if you were on sick leave or holidays. You can come once a week or 4 days in row, does not matter. Underperformers and new hires learning the job have to be in the office more. Trainers, buddies and subject matter experts have to come more due to needs as well. Regular people: 4 days a month.
Where I work it was implemented an hybrid model – average of 2 days a week in the office. We currently don’t even have space to bring everyone back so I think we will keep this indefinitely.
Most of my friends also kept the hybrid model, around 2-3 times in the office.
We’ll see what the future brings, but I’m optimistic that it came to stay.
Seems to still be going strong in Finland. My team goes to the office once a week. My wife hardly ever goes to the office. (a big energy giant).
I know people in my former company still work largely remotely. Plus all of my friends work mainly from home.
Anecdotally, I definitely see fewer people in lunch restaurants than during the pre-pandemic era.
I don’t think I’ve read a study in Finland that has evidence supporting the argument for office over remote work. Around 50% of people say they would leave a job if forced to go to the office. (Myself included). Stress levels are a lot lower, and work/life balance has massively improved.
To a great extent, office workers hold most of the power. There is definitely a general consensus that hybrid work is as far as most companies dare to go now.
Even before 2020, I think Finland had a big proportion of hybrid workers. I used to work from home once a week. Now I work from the office once a week!
It’s preferred in the bigger companies if you’re at the office but it’s OK to work from home time to time. I work in a smaller company, I work at home four days a week, depending if I have customer meetings or trips to the woods etc. I have a office but I’m more productive at home. I work in forestry.🇫🇮
German here who lives in California…
It’s fun because I live near a beach. What’s not fun is my boss moved back to Germany and she hits me up in the middle of the night. But that also means I get most of the day off.
I’m office (UK) based on paper, but I work from home, like the majority of my team (who are based in multiple countries). There’s people going to the office because they choose to, but there’s no obligation. Branches of my company in other countries more or less force people to come back to work at least 2-3 days a week. So the whole strategy is heavily dependent on the local leadership and culture.
Company I work for is just moving to a smaller office space (meaning: there won’t be enough desks for everyone). There is a group that still works mostly in the office, but it it’s either their choice or their position really requires often office presence.
Also, during the pandemic we started to hire 100% remote workers, so most teams won’t be able to work on-site anyway.