Ongoing IT issues hamper productivity of remote workers

Despite the popularity of remote work, employees are still struggling to with the digital experience, hampering productivity and work satisfaction.

Nine in 10 are still facing technical and remote work network problems at work, in the office, or in-between, according to a survey by Exoprise.

Almost half of the survey respondents say that their devices operated more slowly outside the company’s network, affecting their productivity and engagement levels.

“Digital friction” includes problem areas such as dropped calls from platforms like Microsoft Teams, Zoom or Cisco Webex, slow page loading, application crashes, and unresponsive endpoint devices, says the company.

According to 75% of the respondents, slow network response time and unpredictable application performance are the biggest impediments to productivity, which happen several times a week if not resolved.

Most of the respondents either try to solve problems by themselves or get validation from their co-workers. Only a few (12%) indicated they escalated to the helpdesk or submitted tickets.

“That number is low because the problems go unfixed or take longer to resolve, sometimes days or weeks, with a lack of resolution,” says Exoprise.

Links to burnout, turnover

The report, which surveyed over 2,000 digital workplace employees and 1,000 IT decision makers in North America, also revealed that unreliable IT equipment and services is the second most important factor behind employee burnout and turnover.

In fact, 15% of the respondents said they would leave their jobs due to poor experience with productivity tools.

These findings indicate that organisations are at an "interesting juncture where collaboration between IT and business leaders has grown like never before," says Jason Lieblich, Exoprise CEO.

"The reliance on digital tools and real-time collaboration continues unabated with increased support demand, expectations, and cost.”

In a separate poll, 61% of respondents to a OpenFin survey said they would consider switching employers if they were provided with better apps and software systems.

"Now that there is potential light at the end of the pandemic tunnel, and with many employees likely to work on a hybrid basis going forward, it is an important moment to invest in our people," he said. "This means considering the application, software and training needs of staff, supercharging employees with the right data in their workflows and decision making to make them more efficient, more effective and much happier."