CCS Insight’s annual Employee Workplace Technology Survey provides insights into employee perspectives and the challenges businesses face.
The survey reveals employees and managers are harbouring several opposing viewpoints, as a silent power struggle wages in the background.
Key findings from the survey include 90% of information workers want some level of remote work, one in four employees are considering resigning this year, and traditional calls have dropped 20%.
Angela Ashenden, Principal Analyst, Workplace Transformation at CCS Insight, said: “The past two years have seen tremendous change in the way we work, and employees have adapted to those changes remarkably well.”
“But with the shift to hybrid work, the next two years could make those changes look like a drop in the ocean — particularly when it comes to the impact on companies’ technology strategies. Employees are certain that hybrid work is the way forward but are worried about what effect it’ll have on the employee experience.”
“As offices start reopening and businesses take a more strategic approach to their transformation in the context of hybrid working, there’s a risk that employee experience bears the brunt.”
“Given the weaker ties that many staff feel to their employer after the pandemic, business leaders should be concerned. It’s also a big opportunity for suppliers of cloud services and other IT providers to add real value by helping companies navigate the turbulence of a new era of hybrid work”.
90% of information workers want some level of remote work: 63% want hybrid work, 27% want to work full-time from home and only 10% of workers in roles that offer home working choose to come into the office full-time.
Nevertheless, employees have a lot of anxiety about the practical implications of hybrid working because many aspects of the model remain unclear and undecided. 18% believe their company is not ready for hybrid working, and the report asserts that the actual level of business readiness is likely to be even lower than employees perceive.
One in four employees are considering resigning this year: The largest portion of those considering leaving their jobs are either young or began at their post since the start of the pandemic. The report showed good colleague relationships and a healthy work-life balance to be valuable commodities to employees, but the move into hybrid has caused instability in these areas.
Traditional calls drop 20%: Microsoft Teams and Zoom have a 50% uptake in the past year. The drop in traditional calling methods is expected to continue over the next 12 months. Some employees expressed concerns that their fixed office networks are having connectivity issues as the networks are not tuned for handling large volumes of video traffic. Meeting apps now account for 46% of all work calls and meetings.
Ashenden told UC Today: “Historically, employee experience discussion, especially in the IT industry, has been very much focused on the technology experience. What we’ve seen over the last couple of years has been this recognition that employee experience goes a lot wider than that.”
“A lot of the challenges we’ve had in working from home have not really been technical challenges. The technical challenges were largely resolved through investment in cloud collaboration tools, for example, and then suddenly everyone realised that it’s not just about these things.”
“We have to think about how we work, how we collaborate, how we manage, and how we make sure that wherever people are, they’re still engaged both to each other and to their organisation.”
Employees also see an emerging role for extended reality and low-code development tools. A quarter of employees have already used extended reality, and 44% would like to try it. Similarly, a quarter of employees have tried using low-code development tools, and 43% would like to try them.
“The key”, Ashenden believes, “is really going to be recognising the need to adapt over time, and it’s something that I think businesses have become very familiar with over the pandemic.”
“As much as businesses want to create some sort of structure and control going forward, they must recognise the need for adaptability. I think this will have to start being built into management strategy.”
NFON recently spoke to UC Today about how to help enterprises adapt to the hybrid workplace.
CCS Insight surveyed 611 respondents from the U.S. and Europe across various roles and sectors. The survey was carried out through an online survey in February 2022.
Microsoft’s annual work trend index also found disagreements between employers and employees over hybrid working.
