“The pandemic was a big challenge for us, the war is a new challenge. Volatility will be something normal in the next years in many sectors. One thing is for sure. Each major change in our lives brings the need to adapt, to evolve. The pandemic made us stronger. We need to adapt; we need to find out how to go further. Working from home is a reality, but the decrease in productivity is also a reality. Companies’ profits have also decreased. We all need to be involved in the profitability growth of the companies and keep them floating in these troubled times,” Antoniu Panait, Managing Director, Vastint Romania said during People Empowering Business Forum organized by The Diplomat-Bucharest.

“I believe in shared management; I believe in sharing both the good things and the worries that we have. This way companies can step forward into the future. Work from home sounds good but it brings a lot of challenges for families and companies.

I worked from home for a couple of weeks and then I said that’s enough, and I came back to the office. We live to socialize, not to stay in caves.

We have 100,000 sqm of offices in Bucharest in Timpuri Noi Square and Business Garden projects. We build those projects from scratch, and we learned many lessons with our partners. We learned about their needs and worries, so we are exposed to different experiences, different companies, different types of business. On one hand, people are asking to work from home. But on the other hand, the figures are looking that great anymore. There are of course exceptions, some IT companies. Other companies say to us that they can’t create content by sitting in front of laptops and that they need people to interact at the office.”

Full recording of the conference: