Survey Concludes Many Remote Employees Not Working Fully Efficiently

Victor Lipman

Being admittedly Old School, I have to say that when first considering issues related to the efficiency of remote mobile technology I felt a little like a stegosaurus doing algebra. But one thing I do know about is management, so when a survey recently came across my desk related to the productivity aspects of mobile operations, it caught my eye.

Especially when the data indicated that a sizable percentage of remote employees are not working as efficiently as they could be.

Conducted by Citrix (whose software is used in mobile work environments) andForrester (a research firm), the study is titled Maximize Productivity And Security With Mobile Workspaces.  Respondents included information workers – defined as those using “a computer for work” – in the U.S., U.K., France and Germany.

Given the business trend away from work in a central office location and toward multiple remote environments, the efficiency of those working remotely will only become an increasingly important management issue.  Of the respondents in this survey, 65% work remotely one day a week, and 37% work remotely two or more days a week.

Mismatch between needs and tools – Despite this growing tendency to work remotely, there appears to be a mismatch between the technology remote employees need and the tools often provided by their organizations.  Consider the survey data.

When working at home, 85% of those surveyed use a “mobile device” (defined as a smartphone or tablet) for work purposes, compared to 60% who use a “PC” (defined as a desktop computer or laptop). Many remote employees of course use both, which is why the percentages exceed 100%.

However, despite the prevalence of remote-work mobile device usage, 44% disagreed with the statement “I can access the work applications I need on my mobile device.”

Where exactly was this gap?  What applications would be helpful but often are lacking? According to the employees surveyed:

·         44% of respondents would like better collaboration tools (webconferencing, voice/video chat, instant messaging service)

·         42% would like better remote access tools (such as employee intranet or organization portals)

·         40% would like improved “file synchronization/sharing for business data”

When employees do feel they’re working efficiently from a remote site, 61% believe the arrangement does increase their overall productivity.

The survey report concludes: “Mobile devices are the primary devices used for work by many employees, but without access to all of the same apps, data, and services they have on their computers, employees will have to constantly switch back and forth between devices – or they will look for ways to circumvent corporate security to gain access to what they need.  This not only affects productivity, but it also has the potential to put sensitive corporate data at even more risk.”

Having managed numerous remote employees during my own management career, I can readily attest to the difficulty of remote management.  Even aside from the technology issues noted here, I often found it frankly hard to be certain how efficiently remote employees were working.  A layer of technological inefficiency adds another dimension to the management challenge.

Victor is author of  The Type B Manager: Leading Successfully in a Type A World(Prentice Hall Press).

Original