How remote working employees go rogue in search of productivity ⁰

Although many European employees now spend long hours each week working remotely, many of them don’t think their employers provide them with the tools they need to do their jobs properly and so go ‘rogue’ to find the best ways of communicating with each other and using information. That is the key finding of a new study from internal communications specialist Newsweaver which explores the ways remote working employees use mobile devices. It found that while one in five workers across the EU now spend at least ten hours a week working remotely, 41 per cent do not believe that the tools their company provides meet their needs. They therefore choose to use their own apps instead. This fact is well understood by IT teams with three out of four technology managers admitting they are offering staff outdated tools.

The study claims that this mismatch is not down to any shortfall in the enthusiasm firms have for remote working and Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) policies. It claims that four in ten organisations will rely exclusively on BYOD by 2016 and more than 80 percent will have a formal policy in place by 2020.

The study outlines the growing impact of the practice of Bring Your Own App (BYOA) in this context, with more than half of employees conceding they use apps unknown to their IT department although IT managers themselves don’t appear to find it surprising that employees choose to go rogue because they know the devices and apps they provide are often outdated, slow or provide the wrong functionality.

The study, presented in this infographic, also draws attention to the fact that more than half of Generation Y employees now believe that they would be more productive if allowed to work more flexibly and are aware that they need to find their own best ways of working and communicating regardless of the tools with which they are supplied by employers.