Nearly 60% of British office workers struggle to find important files or documents, found a new research by information management company Iron Mountain.

The research revealed that 58% of office workers struggle to find important files they thought they had saved on their work computer.

The study, which was conducted by YouGov on behalf of Iron Mountain, highlighted that with over 60% of all company information now being carried on PCs and laptops, looking for lost or deleted files is a waste of valuable staff time, a burden on IT helpdesk resources and can sap employee morale.

Iron Mountain Digital sales director Richard Ellis said that looking for documents can be extremely frustrating for employees as well as damaging for the business.

"With more and more employees working remotely on laptops and struggling to deal with an ever-growing quantity of information, it is inevitable that documents will get lost-the consequence of a hard drive failure, the theft of a portable device or accidental deletion- resulting in anguished calls to the IT department," Ellis said.

"The YouGov research also showed that well-intentioned company policies on how to store and manage company information are not always getting through to the workforce," added Ellis.

The research revealed that approximately 23% of office workers are unaware or not very aware of their organisation’s data management policies, leaving the company vulnerable to damaging data breaches and security infringements.

However, the study aslo said that having a professional data backup offering in place for business computers will enable firms to implement policies without having to rely on individual employees.