Employee Wellbeing Index: In 2025, meaning and work outcomes surpassed salary and benefits as the top motivator for Romanian employees for the first time in history

In 2025, Romanian employees’ main motivation shifted from salary and benefits to the meaning and results of their work, as shown by the Romanian Employee Wellbeing Index, conducted by RoCoach and Novel Research on a national urban sample of 1,000 employees.

The data shows that 27.5% of employees were motivated mainly by meaning and outcomes, overtaking salary and material benefits (19.3%). Stability (14.8%) and autonomy (11.7%) followed as additional engagement factors.

At the opposite end, the report shows that the main demotivating factors in 2025 were not related to workload or technology, but to the relationship between employees and their organisations. Lack of recognition (9.1%), lack of clarity (7.9%) and internal conflicts (7.8%) significantly eroded employee wellbeing, indicating a deficit of feedback, dialogue and respect in the workplace. At the same time, the main sources of exhaustion for Romanian employees in 2025 were excessive workload (23.3%), constant pressure from tight deadlines (19.6%), and lack of work-life balance (16.4%).

The report indicates that employees accept high workloads and pressure when there is meaning, recognition and self-control over their own activity. In their absence, the same effort quickly becomes an emotional burden difficult to sustain. Burnout therefore does not appear as a result of intense work itself, but rather of work carried out in a context perceived as unfair, unpredictable or insufficiently explained.

“We see that people are not drained by long working hours, but by operating in environments where their efforts are poorly communicated, undervalued, and disconnected from a larger purpose. When work lacks meaning, any workload feels burdensome. Simultaneously, there is a significant shift in how employees define wellbeing in daily work, reflecting a more mature perspective on their relationship with employment. Increasingly, work is not merely a source of income, but a place where contributions should be valued, have meaning, and offer coherence” explains Mihai Stănescu, Founder of RoCoach, Romania’s first coaching company and developer of the Organizational Transition Quotient (ORQ).

According to the Employee Wellbeing Index 2025, as employees advance within organisations, work pressure shifts from volume and financial reward towards responsibility, decision-making and meaning. The data shows that execution-level roles are consumed by intense work and motivated by stability and concrete results, while middle managers experience organisational tensions more acutely. At the executive level, motivation comes primarily from autonomy, meaning, and impact, although this is often accompanied by a higher cost in terms of work-life balance.

At the same time, for long-tenured employees within organisations, regardless of hierarchical level, energy consumption shifts from “uncertainty” and “lack of clarity” towards “high workload” and “constant pressure”, while motivation evolves from salary, recognition and respect towards stability, meaning, autonomy and tangible work outcomes.

“Both the parametric data and the micro-narratives showed us that people speak more about being treated fairly than about material benefits, about managers who explain decisions and about the freedom to organise their work without micromanagement. When these are missing, work quickly becomes a source of frustration and wear, hence the worrying conclusion that 1 in 4 Romanian employees were at the limit of burnout in 2025”, says Marian Marcu, Managing Partner, Novel Research.

The ‘AI anxiety’ myth: technology is not the real problem

Although artificial intelligence was widely debated in 2025, its direct impact on employee wellbeing was limited compared to other organisational factors. Only 5% of employees identified AI and technology as a major source of exhaustion. In contrast, 47.1% reported that technology and AI helped them at work, while 13.9% said these technologies negatively affected them.

The 2025 Employee Wellbeing Report shows that AI is not perceived as an autonomous threat, but as an amplifier of organisational reality. In organisations with clear roles, functional leadership and autonomy, technology is perceived as support. In organisations with misaligned processes and opaque decision-making, technology amplifies pressure and confusion.

”There is a lot of talk about anxiety related to AI, but the data shows that employees are not afraid of technology itself. What exhausts them is the chaotic integration of technology into an already unbalanced and misaligned way of working. That is why the discussion about technology cannot be separated from the discussion about work design”, states Mihai Stănescu, Founder of RoCoach.

Employee Wellbeing Index 2025

The Employee Wellbeing Index 2025 is a composite tool developed by RoCoach and Novel Research to measure the real quality of Romanian employees’ work experience in 2025. It is built around five core dimensions of organisational life: clarity, autonomy, recognition, fairness and human relationships.

Each dimension is standardised on a 0 – 100 scale, with the final score reflecting overall workplace wellbeing. The index has strong psychometric validation (Cronbach’s Alpha = 0.891), confirming that the dimensions coherently measure a unified construct of organisational wellbeing.

Data were collected between November and December 2025 using the CAWI (Computer Assisted Web Interviewing) method, on a sample of 1,000 urban employees.