More than two-thirds of IT decision-makers say workplace technology is outdated, according to SCC’s inaugural ‘IT Insights Report’ on Workplace Productivity.
The first in a new series of reports commissioned by SCC – which surveyed a panel of 550 IT decision-makers from 11 public and private sectors – shows 69 percent of respondents agree with the statement. Within this, 90 percent of respondents from police forces agreed – the largest segment by some distance.
The survey asked the panel questions relating to the technology they use at home versus at work, looking at the technology itself and its uses. There is a recurring theme in the responses indicating that technology at work falls significantly short of technology at home, in terms of age, quality, and access.
The survey reveals a large majority of IT decision makers (82 percent) who believe most employees at their organisation want to be able to work on the move for tasks such as checking email. This despite 68 per cent saying they rely on email at work but don’t use it much or at all at home.
Conversely, 77 percent of those surveyed said they use social media in their personal life but rarely or never for work purposes, highlighting the opportunity for social media to replace more conventional communications within workplaces to better suit people’s technology experiences.
In terms of the ability to remote work, almost three-quarters (73 percent) of respondents say systems for remote working provided by their organisation, such as accessing the server, don’t always work at home. Worryingly, this includes 90 percent of respondents in the national security & defence sector.
Elsewhere in the report, it asked its panel about the effectiveness of their organisation’s applications and found that just half of businesses have applications that are optimised to work in a Windows 10 environment.
Only 40 percent of respondents say their organisation’s applications estate is optimised to work in a remote environment, and 46 percent reporting that Mobile Application Management Policies ensure users can access applications from secure devices when working remotely.
James Greene, CTO at SCC said: “Workplace Productivity has been high on the corporate agenda for some time – but it’s true that some businesses are way behind the curve. The modern workplace continues to evolve, and SCC believe it is vital to keep pace with advancements in technology. Much of the data we’ve analysed supports this view, whilst some of the responses we received provide interesting and at times surprising detail that helps paint an accurate picture of Workplace Productivity in UK business.
“Of particular interest to SCC is how both the public sector and commercial sector face the same challenges when it comes to evolving their modern workplace and like SCC, put users at the heart of their thinking.”
