“In 2020, 8.9 percent of employees in Poland worked from home. Hybrid work in many professions will probably stay permanently, which is not good news for the owners of office buildings,” said Paweł Borys, the head of the Polish Development Fund, on Tuesday.

“Nearly one in eight Europeans worked remotely in 2020. In Finland, Ireland and Luxembourg, nearly one in four. In Poland, 8.9 percent of employees worked from home,” Mr Borys wrote on Twitter.

As he added, “hybrid work in many professions will probably stay permanently, which is not good news for the owners of office space”.

Mr Borys referred to the latest Eurostat data, which revealed what the labor-related measures were introduced to prevent the spread of the coronavirus pandemic.

According to EU data, in 2020, the largest proportion of employees performed their work remotely in Finland (25.1 percent). Luxembourg came second (23.1 percent), followed by Ireland (21.5 percent).

The EU average amounted to 12.3 percent. In this ranking, Poland is below the EU average with a result of 8.9 percent. Among others, fewer employees than in Poland performed their duties “mostly remotely” in the Czech Republic (7.2 percent) and Slovakia (5.7 percent), as well as in Hungary (3.6 percent). The lowest proportion of people who had the opportunity to predominantly perform their duties from home was in Bulgaria – only 1.2 percent.

Eurostat data show that last year on average more women than men worked remotely (13.2 percent against 11.5 percent). The highest percentage of employees who performed work in this way was recorded in the age group between 25 and 49.

The April report by CBRE shows that in the first quarter in Warsaw alone, the total available office space exceeded 6.04 million square meters, which is an annual increase of 8 percent. In the first months of this year, 109,000 sq m was leased, which is a decrease by 21 percent compared to the same period last year.