Nearly two years into remote working, Australia’s businesses are still facing barriers when it comes to meeting the needs of the workforce, with 40% of workers seeing no change in their productivity since working from home, and 14% seeing a decline in their productivity all together.
New research from DocuSign, titled The evolution of working from anywhere, finds that despite a majority of businesses embracing a flexible working model since March 2020, 74% of Australian workers admit that working from home still poses its fair share of challenges.
“Our research shows that in this new work world, organisations need to continuously analyse and act to design the optimal workspace.
In today’s workplace culture, employee needs are continually evolving, and as a result, businesses need to invest in innovative solutions to ensure their staff have the right support in their field of work. All the while remembering that in this new era, one size doesn’t fit all,”
– Dan Bognar, DocuSign’s Group Vice President and General Manager for the Asia Pacific and Japan (APJ) region.
The survey of more than 500 Australian full time senior business leaders, managers and employees, conducted in partnership with YouGov, finds that across the generations, barriers to successful remote working environments remain.
Millennial and Gen X employees find that they still lack the right technology support for their jobs (31%), compared to Baby Boomers (4%). Meanwhile, 7 in 10 Gen Zers find that they do not have the right tools to collaborate and communicate with their teammates, impacting their ability to learn and grow as the newest members of the workforce.
In light of these barriers, more than half (52%) of Australia’s workforce, across all generations, feel that they are remaining stagnant or are falling behind when it comes to their workplace productivity.
Despite 6 in 10 organisations introducing new tools to improve the workplace experience since the start of the pandemic, 74 per cent of Australians admit that working from home still poses its fair share of challenges –with 40 per cent seeing no change in their productivity and 14 per cent actually seeing a decline.
Two years since mandated remote work, “The Evolution of Working from Anywhere,” found that Australian businesses have room for improvement when it comes to creating optimal WFH environments –with workers demanding better tech.
The newest entrants to the workforce, Gen Z, are some of the most frustrated – with 8 in 10 admitting that working from home has been challenging, particularly when it comes to collaborating and communicating with teammates (70%).
Across the board, the most challenging parts of WFH include:
– Teamwork/collaboration (43%)
– Document storage (18%)
– Managing current/new customers (18%)
– Managing contracts (14%)
If businesses are to continue to embrace flexible working on a permanent basis (53%), they must think beyond what tools will enable their employees to work from home, and consider what will enable them to be more connected, engaged and productive.
