Over the past few months we’ve helped businesses navigate the complexities of rapidly transitioning to a remote workforce due to COVID-19 shelter-in-place mandates. With many organizations now past the initial transition phase, we wanted to learn which aspects of remote work they’re still struggling with, and how they’re addressing and prioritizing those hurdles.
Accordingly, we recently conducted a survey of 167 organizations about their remote work experiences.
In summary, we found that more than 98% of small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) now employ a remote workforce, a 43% increase over the period before the COVID-19 crisis. With the majority of employees now working from home, employee productivity has been ranked as the top concern of both employers and employees alike. Moreover, maintaining productivity is almost twice as important as the second top concern for employers, security, and for employees, communication, respectively.
Here are some other highlights from our remote work survey:
- 41% of organizations with a remote workforce do not yet have a dedicated remote work policy in place.
- Nearly 50% of organizations rank employee productivity as their top remote work concern, followed by security & compliance (19%) and collaboration & communication (13%).
- 42% of respondents also believe personal productivity is a top concern amongst remote employees.
- When asked about remote work tools and technology:
- Over 80% of respondents ranked productivity tools as most important.
- Nearly 75% selected remote conferencing tools as their top pick.
- Over 70% selected live chat tools as essential.
- Software/Services industry professionals made up the largest category of survey respondents.
- Construction/Engineering experienced the largest increase (58%) in organizations adopting remote work in the wake of COVID-19.
Below are the full remote work survey results:
Q1: What does your company do?
Q2: How many total employees do you have?
Q3 & Q4: What percentage of your employees worked remotely pre-COVID-19? And what percentage work remotely now?
Q5: Does your organization have a dedicated remote work policy in place?
Q6: What was your top concern soon after transitioning to a remote work environment?
Q7: What is your top concern TODAY?
Q8 - Q13: Rank the importance of remote workforce tools. (1 = least likely, 5 = most likely)*
Q14: Based on the current success of your remote workforce, how likely are you to re-evaluate your company's remote workforce expectations for employees following the pandemic? (1 = least likely, 5 = most likely)
Q15: What are the top concerns of your employees who are working remotely?
Q16: What are you doing remotely to maintain company culture and boost morale?
Q17. What advice do you have for other businesses trying to enable the success of their remote workforce?
Thank you to everyone who participated in our survey and for helping us better understand the impact of quickly transitioning to remote work. For additional, free resources on how to optimize your remote workforce, visit our Remote Workforce Resource Center.
