Last week The METISfiles published a report on Dutch mobile workers on behalf of Citrix. The research was a quick check on how mobile workers in the Netherlands perceive the new normal of mobile working and whether they thought the companies they worked for actually supported mobile work.
The view of mobile workers on how companies support them in terms of policy was mixed. In at least 25% of the cases mobile work was not allowed or stimulated unless the respondent’s job was mobile in itself; in other words in those companies mobile work was not an explicit option. On the other side of the spectrum 39% of the mobile workers indicated that their organization had some sort of mobile work policy in place. In these companies working mobile is supported but the degree to which a company facilitates mobile work varies a great deal.
N= 524
Source, The METISfiles, November 2015
The biggest advantages of working mobile for the mobile worker are increased efficiency (66%), increased availability (65%), and less travel time (63%). Interestingly mobile workers complain that they work more hours (40%), that they are now always available (42%) and that there is less internal communication (42%). The advantages so to speak come at a certain cost.
Mobile workers think that increased productivity (60%), more satisfied employees (50%) and lower fixed costs (real estate and facilities) (39%) are the big drivers for companies to facilitate mobile work. At the same time they also think that their companies’ management fear lack of control, and that less coherency and complexity are a disadvantage of mobile work. Clearly employers and employees think differently about the (dis)advantages of mobile work.
While many CEO’s agree that mobile is the future and a Mobile First or Mobile Only strategy is therefore the way forward, reality is far from that. From our research it appears that there is still much room for improvement of mobile support both from a business, technological, and an HR perspective. To reach the real benefits of mobile work companies should therefore devise a mobile strategy that puts people, processes and technology first.
If you like to read up on more of the research you can download a copy of the results and press release.
