Wednesday, October 20, 2010

60% of Office Workers Say They Don't Need Their Offices

 A new study funded by Cisco found that 60 percent of workers around the world believe that they do not need to be in the office anymore to be productive. This was especially the case in Asia and Latin America. More than nine of 10 employees in India (93 percent) said they did not need to be in the office to be productive. This sentiment was extremely prevalent in China (81 percent) and Brazil (76 percent) as well.


In fact, their desire to be mobile and flexible is so strong that 60 percent of workers would choose jobs that were lower-paying but allowed work outside of the office over higher salaried jobs that lacked such flexibility. 


According to the study, which involved surveys of 2,600 workers and IT professionals in 13 countries, 13 percent of respondents noted that having the flexibility to work anywhere would dictate their company loyalty, while 12 percent said it would have an impact on their choice of jobs. In fact, two-thirds of respondents said they would take a job with less pay and more flexibility in device usage, access to social media and mobility over a higher-paying job with less flexibility.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I work mostly in the office with some time at home or elsewhere.

I can be extremely productive at my current skill level and assignment out of the office. And like it better.

But to change/improve my skills and move on to new types of assignments, I need to be in the office, learning from my peers.

I don't mean just technical skills here. In the office I learn what it is I should be learning.

I learn how I might fit in to other teams and assignments. I learn how my organization is changing what it values. I learn, if only from body language, what's truly important and urgent. And, most important, I learn these things early.

Working mostly out of the office, I may well learn these things later, perhaps not until they've been codified and the emails sent out. Perhaps too late to help me figure out how I can improve my value to the organization.

If nothing else, I learn a great deal about business and technology from my wonderful and very diverse set of peers.

IM, email, FB, conference calls cannot replace the richness and nuance of four people debating around the whiteboard. I'd stagnate in many ways without that interaction.

As always, YMMV.

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