The results of a new survey from Arkphire, Citrix and Dell suggest that directors and staff feel differently about remote working.
IT company Arkphire has published the results of a recent survey it carried out with Citrix, Censuswide and Dell Technologies. It asked 700 people in Ireland – 200 senior directors and 500 office employees who have been working from home throughout the pandemic – about the impacts of remote working.
The findings highlight “widely differing perceptions” of remote working, Arkphire said. Senior directors were more likely to believe that remote working has positively impacted their business, but many employees felt differently.
Self-discipline
The majority (81pc) of directors said that their employees’ self-discipline had improved while working remotely. Just 46pc of employees held the same view.
Bigger companies were more affected than smaller ones, according to the survey. In companies with more than 100 office workers, 27pc of employees felt their self-discipline had deteriorated, compared with 18pc of employees in smaller businesses.
Camaraderie and culture
When it came to staff camaraderie, more than half (54pc) of directors said remote working had made a positive impact. Again, employees responded differently, with 19pc saying it had improved and 39pc saying it had gotten worse.
The responses were similar for company culture. Here, 56pc of directors said that remote working had led to a more cohesive company culture. However, just 23pc of employees agreed and 28pc said it had deteriorated.
Trust and confidence
Although 63pc of directors expressed concerns that their employees were rethinking their job prospects while working remotely – and 52pc of employees said they were in fact doing so – both groups said that trust and confidence had improved.
Almost all of the directors (98pc) surveyed said they trust that their employees are working well remotely and 90pc of employees said they feel trusted by their employer.
At 94pc, most directors also said they feel either more or as confident in their ability to manage their teams remotely, and 80pc of employees said the same about managing their workloads from home.
Learning from the impacts of remote working
“Since the abrupt shift towards a decentralised workforce, there have been some very important learnings for companies when it comes to effectively managing and supporting remote working,” said Paschal Naylor, chief executive at Arkphire.
“Business leaders need to reflect on the inherent challenges associated with long-term remote working from an employee’s perspective.
“We have a unique set of actionable data points that clearly show a significant perception chasm between management and staff when it comes to the effectiveness of remote working across numerous strands, particularly around workload management, delegation, performance assessments and employee onboarding.
“With the Government recently unveiling the National Remote Working Strategy, the future of work looks increasingly decentralised. As such, better work-from-home policies will need to be developed to ensure there is a greater synergy between business leaders and employees, so that remote working works for everyone.”
