Nearly six months into the COVID-19 pandemic impacting how nearly every organization operates, ServiceNow’s global “The Work Survey” offers insight into how executives and employees view the increased reliance on technology and the shift to telework.
The survey, released Oct. 7, found that the benefits of remote work are near-universally praised – 99 percent of executives and 94 percent of employees. However, with a few months of remote work under their belts, both executives (93 percent) and employees (83 percent) expressed concerns about how remote work will impact business moving forward.
While there is strong agreement that remote work offers both benefits and challenges, executives and employees differ on what exactly those benefits and challenges are. More than half of employees (54 percent) say that the time saved from not having to commute to the office or travel for work has benefitted them the most. On the other hand, half of executives believe that better use of technology to improve efficiency has been the greatest benefit of remote work. As for challenges, slightly more than half (54 percent) of executives are concerned most with delays in products or services, while 48 percent of employees are concerned about reduced collaboration between business units.
Despite fairly successful moves to remote work, executives and employees admit they still have a way to go. Nearly all executives (91 percent) admitted that they still have offline workflows, including document approvals, security incident reports, and technology support requests. While organizations have been making progress on moving to all digital workflows, 60 percent of executives and 59 percent of employees said that their companies still do not have a fully integrated system to manage digital workflows.
The vast majority of employees (87 percent) say the pandemic has actually improved the way their company thinks about how they work. On top of that, 91 percent of executives and 87 percent of employees say their company transitioned to new ways of working faster than they thought possible. Despite those findings, ServiceNow found that most executives and employees believe key business functions would not be able to adapt as quickly in the event of another disruption.
