COVID-19 has catapulted us into remote working and dramatically accelerated digital transformation in businesses around the globe. In many cases, this has left us scrambling to implement new technologies, processes and ways of working. Whilst many of us were accustomed to occasionally working from home, scheduling calls around partners and home-schooling has created an additional layer of ‘invisible work.’

To understand how this sudden move to virtual communications and remote work has affected us as employees and leaders, Adaptive has performed a survey amongst 2800 knowledge workers from the UK, US, Canada and Australia in May 2020.

They call it a Digital Etiquette Study.

What they aimed to find answers to are amongst other things:

What are the biggest challenges in getting work done in a completely digital world?
How can businesses future-proof their workforces in an uncertain time?

Workers feel more productive at home with a staggering 82 percent reporting that they ar equally or more productive when working from home.
But at the same time, there is anxiety in the workforce on how to utilize the communication tools,.

In average employees spend 45 minutes every day to search up information they need in order to perform their job duties. Yes, you read correctly - almost half need to spend almost 4 hours every week of their working time looking for information that they either created or that was shared with them. This obviously increases with the number of digital tools they use.

Less than half of them have ever been given any training on how to use the digital channels and tools, impacting all aspects on an efficient digital working environment from productivity to work culture.

Also there is a full blown crisis in terms on feeling the necessity of “always be on”, causing stress. 26 percent find it hard to switch off after regular working hours. The distinction between free tim and work time is continuously being blurred.

Increasingly blurred lines between work and personal lives are the greatest threat to motivation closely followed by the absence of office social interaction  21 percent said these blurred lines had the greatest negative impact on their motivation closely followed by working side by side with colleagues (20 percent) and the absence of chance meetings with colleagues they don’t work with directly (17 percent)

Jon Kern, a HR consultant and author, phrases it correctly that

“if you struggled to get work done when co-located, going remotely only exacerbates and exaggerates the problems.”

Once again it’s confirmed, that just going for any software solution doesn’t automatically make you more efficient.

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