As businesses and society, in general, plod their way through another week of making the best of a terrible situation, we wanted to take another look at how coronavirus is impacting the work lives for members of our office technology community.
In this week’s survey, we wanted to learn about how companies are faring while operating in a work-from-home environment. For this survey, we requested that only companies with employees who are working from home participate in order to get an accurate barometer for the success (or lack thereof) in employing this practice. That seems obvious, but we didn’t want to include those who aren’t allowing it at all to distort the findings.
Again, an overwhelming number of participants (61.5%) identified themselves as dealers. MPS specialists represented 6%, with OEMs and manufacturer directs combining for nearly 10%. The balance consisted of VARs, managed IT providers, distributors, leasing companies and consultants, among others. Midwesterners made up a significant portion of our responders at 40%, followed by the Northeast (20%), Southeast (15%), Southwest (12%), Southern Midwest (8%) and Northwest (5%).
Our first question posed “Did your company offer a remote working option prior to the coronavirus outbreak?” A little more than half (57%) had already enabled at least some of their employees to work remotely. In terms of what positions were permitted to work from home, almost 94% enabled sales, 83% allowed admin and 55% permitted service employees to operate remotely.
The second question dealt with infrastructure. We asked, “How prepared were your employees to work from home?” Exactly 43% indicated that many of their employees already had an infrastructure for working remotely. About 34% reported that the company issued work laptops loaded with the necessary software programs. Just shy of 31% indicated that the employee’s personal laptop or desktop computer sufficed. None of the responders requested that employees purchase hardware or software.
We asked survey participants “Do you use monitoring software to track employee activity?” Nearly three in four responders said they do not monitor their people via software.
Lesser of Evils
The next two questions examined the topic of effectiveness, or ineffectiveness, of remote working. On the question of why it is effective, nearly 48% considered it preferable to laying off/furloughing valued employees. Almost 42% indicated that conferencing and communication tools enable the company to stay connected.
On the flip side, more than 38% pointed out that even with communications tools, working remotely is not as collaborative. Another 26% said that the nature of the job is not conducive to remote working, while 14% indicated that overall productivity is down.
Left to their own devices (no pun intended), employees seem to be making a concerted effort to do their jobs from home. Slightly less than 14% of survey responders noted that they needed to reprimand work-from-home employees due to a lack of productivity.
Moving Forward
Looking beyond the coronavirus, we asked respondents “Given your experience with employees working remotely, how inclined will you be to offer it on a limited basis when the quarantine is lifted?” Of the total, 40% said their opinion of remote working had not changed and that it is not ideal for their purposes. Another 26% said they had maintained a favorable attitude toward remote working. Twenty percent counted themselves as more inclined to offer it now and see the value in it. Almost 14% now say they are now less inclined to offer it going forward, as employees are not as productive.
Video conferencing software enables companies to more effectively touch base with their employees and maintain some semblance of face-to-face contact. We wanted to know which platforms companies have been utilizing, listing eight of the most well-known brands. Three titles dominated the responses, led by Zoom Meeting (26%), Microsoft Teams and GoToMeeting (25% each). Just 6% use Cisco Webex, while slightly less than 5% do not use video conferencing software.
It’s encouraging to note that the vast majority of companies were able to use their incumbent platform following the outbreak, with almost 83% indicating it was appropriate for their needs. More than 6% needed to make a change due to connectivity issues, while 3% had to switch out because of a difficult user interface. The same percentage switched platforms out of security concerns.
In conclusion, we asked survey participants “How effective are employees working from home?” More than 58% replied, “Given circumstances, they have done an admirable job.” Nearly 31% reported, “We’ve had mixed results; some have performed better than others.” Another 6% said of the practice “It is absolutely not viable,” while roughly 5% responded, “With a few exceptions, it has largely been ineffective.”
Analysis
There are two ways of looking at the numbers. An optimist might point out that 89% combined feel employees are faring well under the circumstances, or at worst have had mixed results. The real question is whether forced quarantines have moved the needle in attitudes toward the effectiveness of remote working. Roughly 46% either favored the practice pre-outbreak or developed a favorable outlook during the shutdown. But 40% had not changed their opinion of it as being less than ideal, with another 14% becoming less inclined, viewing employees as being less productive.
As with any survey, there are inherent flaws that stem from the wording of questions, the degree of participation or other variables that may skew the findings. Anecdotally, it might be said that there has been a significant shift in attitude toward remote work environments in the last five years. In time, 2020 and COVID-19 may be viewed as the catalyst that triggered an evolution of the future of work environments.
