A significant minority of businesses (31 percent) don’t have proper policies in place which would enable employees to work remotely and in a more agile way. This is according to a new report from Sigma, a UX design and development agency.
The company uncovered the roadblock when investigating communication and collaboration in the workplace, where respondents said that there was plenty of room for improvement. From 500 SMEs and 500 employees from medium-large businesses polled for the report, just four in every 10 believe meetings are fully effective. One in ten even said they were completely ineffective. While most employees said some improvements could be made, a third was relatively radical in their opinions, stating that internal communications need to be “completely overhauled”.
Collaborating in an agile environment, although some see it as a way forward, still needs plenty of tweaking. While most (92 percent) of those working in agile settings said it was easy (or at least not hard) to collaborate in such an environment, there were still some who considered it difficult.
For Hilary Stephenson, managing director at Sigma UK, the fact that a third of employees can’t take advantage of remote working is worrying, and something leaders should pay attention to.
“Of course, this may be due to the type of industry in which they operate, but it’s clear that – regardless of sector – there is huge demand amongst workers for this type of flexible policy. Amongst those workers who don’t already have remote or flexible working, two-thirds say that they would like to have it.”
“Our research suggests that eight per cent of workers – that’s 2.5 million workers – find it either difficult or very difficult to communicate with colleagues when they are working out of the office,” concluded Stephenson.