How Remote Workers Impact Enterprise Collaboration- Valutrics

This decade has seen the rise of a more open, collaborative workplace—along with a wealth of both personal and company-provided tech tools to enable employees to thrive in these spaces. That said, many organizations still struggle to ensure that both their space and tech support best contribute to positive productivity, according to a recent survey from Oxford Economics and Plantronics. The resulting report, titled “When the Walls Come Down: How Smart Companies are Rewriting the Rules of the Open Workplace,” indicates that most executives said their office space was designed primarily to encourage collaboration. However, employees feel that they’re most productive when they’re able to block out noise and distractions. They also need better support from IT, as only a minority of professionals said their at-home devices integrate seamlessly with their company tools. In addition, the findings reveal how ongoing pressures on both execs and staffers to stay “constantly connected” to devices is creating “information overload” and other stress. “This is more than feel-good stuff,” according to the report. “Employee satisfaction and productivity are closely tied to financial success. While many of our survey respondents say better technology is allowing employees to do higher-value work and even contribute to bottom-line performance, the full value cannot be realized unless technology works as planned and employees have the distraction-free space they need to do that strategic work. In short, giving employees what they want—the ability to do their jobs well, and with minimal stress and distraction—pays off.” More than 1,200 global senior execs and employees took part in the research.