Partner Article

Survey: “Business technology is dragging behind consumer tech”

Technology at work must catch up with what we’re using in our personal lives. That’s according to 22 million UK workers, who make up 72% of today’s workforce, as revealed in a new report from business communications company Fuze. The findings highlight the attitudes and expectations of 5,000 workers and 2,500 teenagers on how, when and where they want to work.

The report, ‘The app generation: how employees of the future are shaping the way we work,’ focuses on the business impact of today’s generation of 15 to 18-year-olds. It reveals a large disconnect between the expectations of young people and the realities they will actually face at work. Today’s workers consider desk phones, printers, pens and paper as essential workplace items, yet teenagers think very differently:

• Teenagers are 25% more likely than today’s employees to view a smartphone as an essential work item
• 75% of teenagers say using the latest technology at work is important
• Just 2% of teenagers use a landline, preferring text-based, video and mobile communication

The research also highlights dissatisfaction among current workers, with 51% saying the technology they use at work is inadequate for working effectively. This leads to significant ‘shadow IT,’ as 39% use their own mobile phones for work and many work with software outside of IT’s control, including messaging apps (32%) and video calling (25%).

The research findings also link closely to the rise in working from home and suggest the trend will continue, with 89% of office workers seeing benefits in being able to work somewhere other than the office and 65% agreeing they could work effectively from home, if they had the right technology.

In addition, the report predicts how communication technology will change, with 59% of workers believing video will eventually replace voice. This statistic is echoed in teenage behaviour, with 8% preferring to communicate with friends via video call — fewer than in person or via text-based communication, but the same figure as prefer mobile voice.

“The app generation has grown up with mobile as the default. They are used to doing everything on their smartphone, especially communicating, and the current business technology set-up isn’t anywhere near ready for that,” comments Luca Lazzaron, Senior Vice President of International Operations, Fuze.

“Businesses today have traditional ideas of where and what work is, and the technology that matches those traditional ideas – landline phones, desktop computers, even fax machines. Young people won’t know where to start with these outdated technologies. Their mobile-first, flexible, ‘app for everything’ approach marks a much better way of working and our research shows it’s not just young people who feel workplace technology simply isn’t up to scratch. That’s why businesses need to take action now, not just to safeguard themselves for the future, but to provide the tools their employees need today, to be able to work most effectively.”

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Luca Lazzaron .