More than three quarters of UK employees (77%) say that collaboration technology is vital for how they work with colleagues and clients on a day-to-day basis, according to Unify’s Humanising the Enterprise study. However, many workers still face significant tech challenges whether working remotely or in the office.
The survey included more than 1,500 UK-based knowledge workers aged 16-55+ and revealed that technology frustrations at work are the very common among workers, with almost four in five (79%) of Brits admitting to facing challenges. This emphasises that companies need to be doing far more to empower and engage their teams to work productively.
UK companies are demanding high levels of performance from their workers and are failing to deliver a seamless technology experience. Lack of ability to communicate and collaborate through technology is one of the major frustrations for UK workers, with 58 percent identifying the loss of access to social media being the biggest inhibitor to collaboration. This was followed by video conferencing (33%) and being able to send/receive/write emails when needed (12%).
Robert Keenan, head of portfolio management, at Unify UK & Ireland at Unify, says:
“A new type of knowledge worker is entering the workplace – Millennials. Millennials, those born between the 1980s and early 2000s, have grown up with digital technologies, social media and anywhere connectivity. This is driving demand for something different from ‘tried and trusted’ enterprise technology; they want technology that helps in the way they communicate, work and live. That means flipping seamlessly from using their smartphone to a video conference with their colleagues – without having to open multiple applications to achieve their objective.”
62 percent of knowledge workers identify that the need for collaboration technologies will increase significantly within the next two years.
Robert Keenan adds:
“As companies change the way they work from silos into holistic all-encompassing units, so will employee expectations about how they engage and connect with each other. This isn’t just confined to the Millennials; employees across the age spectrum are striving to find new ways of working and collaborating. It’s up to the enterprise to enable this through technology. If they don’t, employees will simply circumvent enterprise tools and use consumer applications instead, leaving you open to security risk and even worse the fundamental loss of productivity.”
Amie Filcher is an editorial assistant at HRreview.
