A new survey released by BT Business and Nortel has revealed that many businesses do not trust their employees to work out of the office – despite 42% of workers believing they can be more productive away from their desk.
Less than one in 10 (8%) of the organisations quizzed said they had faith that workers would still do their job away from the office. The report states that managers are reluctant to move their people away from dated, desk-based days, instead sticking to outdated working models.
This is in stark contrast to workers themselves, who believe that given the right support and technologies, would be more productive while on the road, dealing with a customer or working from home.
John Wright, national chairman, Federation of Small Businesses, said: “This boils down to a matter of trust. In the current climate, small firms need to be operating at full stretch. [The recent] bad weather demonstrated the need for British businesses to enable their employees to be productive, wherever they are.”
The survey says that technologies such as Unified Communications can help dismantle the working practice of ‘presenteeism’ – which says that if a worker is not at their desk, they are not working.
John Dovey, IT services director at BT Business, said: “BT’s 70,000 flexible workers have saved us £500m in building costs and 100,000 tonnes of CO2. We can effectively manage our employees and have seen a 30% rise in productivity. By unifying communications systems our business customers can be more responsive to new opportunities and customer enquiries wherever they are.”
The survey, conducted by YouGov, quizzed 3,473 workers in organisations with less than 500 employees and employed for at least 3 months.
