New research suggests that poor technology and the digital friction it creates are undermining hybrid work productivity.
A study by Scalable Software polled 2,000 workers and found that the average digital employee experience (DEX) has regressed since the organisation’s first such study in 2021 — and that current technology and processes are wasting valuable time. Scalable Software says that workers are working an additional 3.1 weeks a year because of poor DEX, an increase of nearly a week compared with the 2.2 additional weeks when the survey was performed in 2021.
Almost one-fifth (18 percent) of employees considered the DEX provided by their employer as “poor”, up from 15 percent in 2021. Only 34 percent of workers consider their DEX “adequate”.
A critical factor is digital friction, defined by Gartner as the “unnecessary effort extended by employees using technology for work”, which undermines productivity and underpins poor DEX.
Mark Cresswell, Co-founder of Scalable Software, wrote in the report that while hybrid work at large is facing scrutiny as more and more organisations implement a return-to-office mandate of some kind post-pandemic, the real problem is digital technologies, regardless of what location they’re leveraged:
But importantly, the research reveals that it isn’t hybrid work itself that makes employees less productive. It’s the poor DEX knowledge workers are subjected to that impacts their ability to work effectively. And that applies however an employee works – remotely, hybrid, or in the office. Half (50 percent) of all knowledge workers in our survey say negative DEX makes them less productive at their job.”
Other notable findings include the varying instances of what digital friction comprises, with many workers citing “application switching” (35 percent) and “notification overload” (30 percent) as factors in poor DEX. “Complicated workflows that require extra
steps to complete, even for routine tasks”, are cited by 28 percent, while “user interfaces that are hard to navigate and confusing” were cited by just under one-quarter (24 percent).
Knowledge workers are estimated to waste an average of 2.83 hours per week grappling with malfunctioning technology, slow system performance, and suboptimal design and workflows. The study highlights an even greater time loss in companies with 1,501-2,000 employees (3.58 hours) and those with 2,001-3,000 employees (3.4 hours), as well as within the business services (3.42 hours) and telecoms (3.68 hours) spaces.
The overall impact of poor DEX translates to a weekly time loss of 5.55 hours for an individual knowledge worker.
Perhaps most alarmingly, almost two-thirds (62 percent) of those polled said IT departments don’t understand how they work or provide them with a personalised service, an increase on the 49 percent of respondents who said similarly in 2021.
Many respondents stated that poor DEX has negatively impacted their job satisfaction (43 percent), compared to 38 percent in 2021. Significantly more have said it makes them want to leave their job (29 percent) in 2024 than in 2021 (18 percent).
“The debate over working from home or the office is set to continue for some time,” Cresswell added. “But it’s something of a smokescreen for the fundamental issues that the data in this report has revealed. Many organizations today are failing to deliver a digital experience that empowers knowledge workers to be productive and efficient, regardless of their location.”
The Challenges of Hybrid Working and Return to Office
There were several significant surveys last year about the future of hybrid working and return-to-office mandates.
KPMG’s CEO Outlook survey for 2023 highlighted that almost two-thirds of CEOs want to kill hybrid work within three years.
The survey, which canvassed 1,325 CEOs of businesses with revenues over $500 million, found that 64 percent of CEOs planned on a return to the pre-pandemic, fully on-site way of working within the next three years. 87 percent of CEOs aimed to fulfil this ambition by connecting financial incentives and promotion opportunities with on-site attendance.
A study by recruitment business Hays canvassed almost 15,000 professionals and employers and found that more professionals are working exclusively in the office now than working by a hybrid model. It found that, in 2023, over two-fifths of workers worked exclusively in the office (43 percent) while narrowly under two-fifths abided by a hybrid model (39 percent).
Among Hays’s other research was that over three-fifths of employers still offered hybrid working (61 percent), but almost a quarter expected to change their hybrid working policies to mandate employees to return to the office within a year (24 percent) — either exclusively or with reduced allocation for WFH days.
Lastly, Gallagher found that 63 percent were changing office space due to changes in ways of working, challenging the idea that a return to pre-pandemic styles of working was inevitable. That figure constituted over a fifth of businesses planning on moving to smaller offices (21 percent), over one-third was considering moving to shared office space, and seven percent of businesses had already shifted office space.
The scale of the post-pandemic shift in working was illustrated by over two-thirds of UK businesses having introduced hybrid working because of employee demand for greater working flexibility (69 percent). Furthermore, three-fifths of business leaders said they wished they had a hybrid model pre-pandemic because it had been such a success.
from UC Today https://ift.tt/OBdtWZb
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