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Pulse of remote working reveals new digital divide
A new study shows a divide between those who take to remote working and those who don’t
Other survey findings
The importance of Communication and Collaboration
The dual aspects of communication and collaboration become essential for productivity and efficiency. This requires a clear idea of one’s daily work, the order of priority of work and proper communication tools and remote collaborative processes in place to participate in team meetings and successfully execute work.
The survey found that a vast majority (54 percent) of the respondents do not have a structured collaborative infrastructure in place. They stated that they either used emails, messages, calls, or platforms like Google Docs to communicate and align with their team.
Surprisingly, only 33 percent of respondents stated that they had the necessary remote collaboration tools to ensure the entire team is aligned on the process.
Additionally, 14 percent of the remote workers stated that they currently don’t have a process for collaboration.
Additionally, we asked them about the clarity they had on their day to day responsibilities, and only 41% of all remote workers stated that they had full clarity on their priorities and responsibilities. This tells us that communication tools and technology need to be improved for effective collaboration between teams.
We broke this data down by seasoned vs. new remote workers, and once again the difference is only marginal. Although, the only difference that stood out to us is that there were no respondents among full-time remote workers who had zero clarity on their priorities.
Lastly, only 39 percent of all remote workers had visibility on their team’s contribution and knew exactly what their team was doing. Whereas, the majority of the remaining respondents knew how their colleagues were contributing through casual communication.
It is important for employers to provide systems and opportunities that allow the workers visibility on their colleagues’ contributions for a project in order to avoid resentment and disproportionate work distribution.
Additionally, only 46 percent of all respondents
stated that their organization has established work from home policies
in place.
Lack of infrastructure in their work-from-home setups
In the survey, 49 percent of all remote workers stated that they did not have the right equipment and materials required to work from home. This seems to be a common bottleneck among both groups.
This means that only a few employers have become adept at providing the necessary technology, infrastructural tools and material to clear possible bottlenecks in working from home.
A large number of both
seasoned and new remote workers need their employers to resolve these
impediments to remote working. Employers need to ensure the availability
of such material in order to initiate a smoother remote experience for
the employees, which in turn will increase workers’ output and levels of
work satisfaction.
When working from home, what do you miss the most?
Working from home excludes the possibility of spontaneous interactions that are so common to maintaining an informal office culture where crucial information is exchanged, steam is let off and office gossip traded.
We found that the majority of all remote workers miss casual conversations and spontaneous work-related conversations during lunch, smoke breaks, or the elevator with colleagues.
A small percentage of them miss the social life at office like birthday celebrations, fun activities at work; a few miss the chance to get away from their family, and an even smaller percentage who miss office snacks, gym, conference rooms, etc. The chart below, indicates that even seasoned workers feel the pangs of seclusion, despite being more used to remote working.
The data above shows the importance of having a thriving virtual office culture to maintain the happiness quotient of employees and reduce feelings of isolation, especially during the lockdown. So, we asked all our respondents if they had any established virtual interactive sessions in place (Activities like dine digitally, virtual happy hours or coffee, workout sessions, games, birthday celebrations etc). We saw a slightly higher rate with seasoned remote workers in comparison to new remote workers which indicates that they may have adapted to a remote work set-up prior to COVID-19.
Employers must initiate an environment that allows employees to interact with each other on informal terms, with activities like digital dining, virtual birthday celebrations and happy hours, joint workout sessions, team-building exercises through virtual games and other such bonding platforms. This will significantly boost employee morale and contribute to more productivity. After all, a happy worker is a good worker!
Read the conclusions from the report on the next page.
