Work Results Have Become the Main Motivation for Romanians in 2025
A recent study, the "Employee Wellbeing Index", shows an interesting change in the way people view work
Călin Coțoiu and Ion Puican, 17.03.2026, 19:32
A recent study, the “Employee Wellbeing Index”, conducted by RoCoach and Novel Research, shows an interesting change in the way people view work. For the first time, the meaning and results of work have become the main source of motivation for employees. Almost 27.5% of respondents say that they are motivated by the fact that what they do has value and produces results, surpassing the importance of salary and material benefits, which are in second place, by approximately 19.3%. The report shows that, in addition to the meaning of work, stability and autonomy are important factors for employee engagement. On the other hand, the main sources of demotivation are not necessarily related to the workload or technology, but especially to the relationship between the employee and the organization. Lack of recognition, lack of clarity in decisions or internal conflicts strongly affect the well-being of employees. Marian Marcu from Novel Research spoke to us about the context of this study:
“The first thing I want to say is related to the context. No company exists in a bell jar, and neither do employees live in a vacuum. I live in Romania in 2026. When a person comes to the office on Monday morning, they do not leave behind everything that happened over the weekend. … In our analyses, job instability emerged as one of the top 4 factors that exhaust people, and stands shoulder to shoulder with excessive workload and deadline pressure. Probably one of the clearest things the study showed us is that people are extremely sensitive to fairness… And where does frustration come from? Obviously it does not appear out of the blue. It is fed day by day from what we see in the public space… Housing, health, income predictability, all should be the responsibility of public policies. When they are not delivered, the pressure falls on the employer and from there directly on the employee. And my conclusion is simple: well-being at work is not only solved in the organization, but is built in society. …”
Mihai Stănescu from RoCoach gave us explanations about the results obtained by the study:
“Imagine a car driving at a good speed on the highway, but the car engine is already very hot. The car is running, but if you look at the temperature from time to time, at some point a breakdown will surely occur. This is what the Romanian employee well-being index that we have been doing since last year shows. The system seems to be working. Employees work, companies deliver, the results are there. But just below the surface there is a very high tension. The overall score is around 70 out of 100, which simply means an area of fragile balance. Approximately one in four employees is in the burnout risk zone. This does not mean that people no longer want to work, quite the opposite. It means that many are moving forward with responsibility and with great effort, but sometimes without enough emotional energy behind it. …”
Regarding professional exhaustion, or burnout, the study shows that one in four Romanian employees was on the verge of this state in 2025. The study shows that the most common causes are too much work (23.3%), constant pressure of deadlines (19.6%), and lack of balance between work and personal life (16.4%). What kind of expectations and demands do Romanian employees have from the system and employers? Mihai Stănescu tells us:
“… What surprised me a lot is the degree of pragmatism with which people define well-being at work. I’m not talking about spectacular things or exotic, out-of-the-ordinary benefits. I’m talking about extremely simple things: clarity, fair rules, autonomy and respect. Many employees actually say the same thing, that it’s not necessarily the work or the amount of work that’s the problem. People are used to effort in Romania. The problem arises when the rules are not clear, when priorities change from one day to the next or when you feel like you’re pulling without knowing in which direction. And here comes the nice surprise: people don’t ask for miracles. … … They ask for something very simple: clear rules, decisions that have coherence, and people who listen to them, meaning managers and bosses who listen. … But when people feel that the system is not fair or that their personal voice doesn’t matter, the relationship starts to cool down, a distance is formed.”
Employees are looking for their work to have meaning, not just financial benefits:
“The data from the index shows that more and more employees say that the meaning of their work and the results they see motivate them more than the salary. The salary remains important, obviously, but people are starting to ask themselves something very important, I don’t know how to say it in a human way: why am I putting in so much effort? … people in Romania want to feel that their work actually produces something real, that it helps someone, helps a client, develops a product, that it leaves something behind. And I think that here we see a sign of the labor market maturing. . . ”
How demotivation occurs among Romanian employees is also told to us by Mihai Stănescu from RoCoach:
“The idea with demotivation is as follows: in many organizations, this demotivation does not necessarily come from the volume, from how much work is being done. Rather, what we found is that it comes from three very clear things. Lack of recognition. Lack of clarity. And implicitly, internal conflicts…”
The conclusion of the Romanian employee well-being index at the end of 2025 shows that, for more and more Romanians, work is no longer just a source of income, but must have meaning, recognition and a healthy balance with personal life.
