UK businesses witness explosive growth in virtual working
Employees still like to see ‘the whites of their eyes’ when meeting colleagues and customers - technology key to building an effective distributed workforce – trust remains central to building relationships
Today’s UK businesses reflect a much more distributed work environment today, with more than a third of employees working away from the company office during the week. A large proportion of their time is now typically spent in other company offices, client sites and working from home, for example.
At the same time, an overwhelming majority (82%) are now collaborating with co-workers in different locations and 88% with people in other companies, frequently located in other countries. As a result technology has become more important in supporting the growth of remote collaboration, as workers report the increased use of tools such as social networking, video chat and video conferencing, far outpacing that in face-to-face methods of communication.
These were among the key findings of a major Citrix Online-commissioned study of enterprise and SME businesses across the USA, Europe and Australia conducted by Forrester Consulting in September 2010. The survey looked at how staff across all departments and at all levels collaborate with co-workers and staff in third-party companies.
“In line with the survey’s global findings, this study dramatically highlights the increased adoption of flexible working in the UK and the need for tools to enable this effectively,” says Andrew Millard, director of marketing and e-commerce, EMEA, Citrix Online. “However, despite respondents’ push for technology, 82% of respondents still see face-to-face as the most effective means in building relationships, even though these too fall short of the ideal interaction as they are not always convenient, or run efficiently.
“It is clear that virtual meetings cannot take the place of physical meetings in every case,” he confirms, “and there will continue to be a vital role for physical interaction. However, the survey identifies that there is a real opportunity for virtual collaboration technologies to replicate the best aspects of physical meetings, at the same time avoiding many of the inefficiencies and frustrations of face-to-face meetings.”
Key findings
· 91% of respondents have sole use of a networked computer, with 66% using a desktop and a similar 66% a laptop computer at least weekly for work. Reflecting the growth in mobility, 44% use a Smartphone for work purposes on a weekly basis
· 37% work away from the company office in a typical week. Most typically such staff will operate out of the company headquarters (82% of the time), a satellite office (73%) or client site (44%). 34% of UK employees also regularly work from home, compared to only 23% of employees in Germany or the US.
· In communicating and collaborating with co-workers, 82% are based in different offices, with up to 52% located abroad. In addition, 88% have to interact with people in third party companies, with more than one half (52%) based in other countries
· 74% of respondents use web conferencing tools more than they did a year ago in building rapport and trust, social networking tools (57%), team document-sharing sites (52%). In addition, UK employees in particular reflect a substantial increase in the use of video chat (72%), compared to 55% in Germany and 36% in France. Face-to-face methods, by contrast, grew by only 17%
· 82% still see face-to-face meetings as the most effective for relationship-building, significantly ahead of phone (40%) or email (31%). However, this is not ideal, as the largest proportion (43%) see face-to-face as inconvenient
· Location of the attendees is the most important factor in deciding how to meet (cited by 85%), followed by availability (68%), the meeting’s purpose (65%) and travel budgets (53%)
Overall, though SMEs tend to work from home and collaborate with others outside their company more compared to their enterprise counterparts, they typically lag behind larger companies in the use of virtual collaboration tools.
The meeting is dead…long live the meeting
When workers meet, 60% of these interactions are scheduled and are usually strategic, typically focusing on planning projects (highlighted by 87% of respondents) or deciding on a course of action (70%). The minority of ad hoc meetings tend to be more tactical and ‘fire fighting’ in nature, such as the resolution of disputes (58%).
However, in both cases, respondents reflected an almost uniform level of dissatisfaction with in-person meetings in achieving their objectives, with the majority agreeing that this was due to the fact that they were inefficiently run.
At the same time, respondents highlighted the inattentiveness of attendees – such as checking emails during the meeting – as one of the biggest hindrances to both in-person and virtual meetings (cited by 52% and 47% respectively).
And this would appear to be a growing issue for businesses, as younger respondents tend to pay less attention during meetings than their older counterparts and are also less convinced that meetings are a highly efficient way to deal effectively with tasks.
“Overall, the survey indicates that many are still ‘addicted’ to meetings, but are in denial over their effectiveness,” believes Millard. “Respondents overwhelmingly believe that face-to-face meetings are an effective way to build relationships and collaborate, yet when pushed on this, only a minority think they are efficient or find them convenient.”
The importance of trust
Respondents agreed that paying full, undivided attention in both face-to-face and virtual meetings is essential, with 64% rating this of high importance in both cases. Supporting this, 69% were as good as their word in always giving complete attention in any meeting designed to achieve strategic tasks.
By contrast, attitudes toward disruptive behaviours differed significantly. In the case of in-person meetings, only a minority of respondents had a problem with disruptions related to the meeting, such as interrupting the speaker or speaking out of turn (cited by 50%) and having relevant side conversations with other attendees (34%). However, disruptions generally are less frowned on in virtual meetings, with checking emails and surfing the net seen as unacceptable by a much smaller number of respondents.
In another important finding respondents pointed to the need to be able to trust people for face-to-face and virtual meetings to be fully effective:
· 59% believe trust is very important in the case of face-to-face meetings, and 58% for virtual meetings
· This is hard to build in both cases, with only 44% believing this is very easy with in-person meetings and just 16% with virtual meetings
· 66% believe it is important to see their colleagues during a meeting. The main reasons cited are the importance of building trust (by 77%) and reading body language (70%)
· “When considering whether or not they attended too many meetings, survey respondents took a highly pragmatic stance, with 86% agreeing that this depended most of all on whether or not it prevented the completion of other tasks,” says Millard.
“In response, the best of today’s collaboration tools - incorporating high-definition video conferencing, for example - can provide the quality of interaction required to help build confidence and trust, in increasing the use of virtual meetings and so making better use of employees’ time and the corporate budget.”
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