One in five UK office workers admit they struggle with tech more than colleagues

The digitisation of the workplace may be seen as a boon to productivity, but that also depends on how well it’s being adopted by the workforce. A new survey claims that one in five (23 percent) UK office workers struggle with technology; and helping to solve the problems of these less tech-savvy employees takes up an average of 17 minutes of their colleague’s working day. The survey from memory and storage firm Crucial, found that work with an average of four colleagues in their office that are less tech-savvy than them. These colleagues always seem to encounter IT problems at work, distracting 62 percent of the UK workforce and costing businesses lost time fixing issues. Just over one in five (23 percent) British office workers admitted that they felt they were one of the less tech-savvy colleagues. A third of these aren’t worried about being less tech-savvy because they have other skills, another third (34 percent) admitted trying to fix tech problems themselves but always end up calling someone else, whilst 26 percent know someone will fix it for them anyway.

The most common IT complaints from those who are less tech-savvy are a PC or programme freezing or running slowly (46 percent), a PC or programme crashing (38 percent), not being able to connect to the internet (24 percent) and losing unsaved work (23 percent). Office workers said that the most common fixes for their colleague’s issues were calling IT support (32 percent) and turning off their PC (28 percent).

Jonathan Weech, Crucial SSD Sr. Product Marketing Manager says “Slow technology not only wastes time and money but it can be incredibly frustrating. In fact, recent Crucial research found that one in five Brits has a temper tantrum once a week due to slow technology. PCs running slowly, programmes crashing and screens freezing are all avoidable problems.”

When comparing major UK cities, workers in London and Edinburgh are more generous with their time, helping their less tech-savvy colleagues for 17 minutes a day. Workers in Birmingham and Liverpool spend 15 minutes a day assisting colleagues with IT problems. Office workers in Plymouth lose the least amount of time, only donating nine minutes of their day.