Friday, 21 September 2007

Survey: Managers Accept Benefits of Remote Working, Worry about Productivity, Team Bonding & Data Security

Business leaders and managers are becoming more comfortable with their staff working remotely, although concerns remain about the impact of the remote work force on employee productivity, effective teambuilding and computer security.

These were the results that emerged after a survey was done by secure infrastructure firm SonicWALL of more than 1100 managers.

The survey of management views on remote working, which was conducted in the U.S. and Australia by online marketing research firm InsightExpress, indicates more than half of the respondents believe that offering their employees the ability to work remotely is a competitive necessity or at minimum a motivating perk for employees.

More than a third of the 1,184 managers surveyed have employees that work out of the office more than 20 percent of the time. The chief reasons to change their minds among managers with no formal remote worker policy in place are employee motivation, cost of office space, rising gas prices and traffic or weather conditions.

Half of poll takers also reported that their firms have formal remote worker policies in place. But despite this growing support for offsite working, business leaders identified several concerns unique to managing a remote work force. The top three anxieties – each reported by more than 20percent of respondents -- included:

• Worry over whether their remote workers will remain productive, in spite of the fact that more managers – 34 percent -- believe remote workers are more productive rather than equally or less productive than their in-office peers

• Challenges to building strong teams, with 15 percent believing remote workers are missing out on an aspect of the job by not being in the office

• And concerns about potential security breaches resulting from remote access, especially top-of-mind for almost a quarter of respondents who had no policy in place for securing remote access.

“Our findings confirm that the majority of IT managers need to reassess their plans for safely connecting remote workers to corporate network resources,” said Steve Franzese, vice president of marketing at SonicWALL.

“In our 2006 survey of remote workers, we found that security rated very low on their priority list. It’s therefore incumbent upon IT administrators to deploy flexible and practical secure remote access technology that enforces strict security but is easy to manage and even easier for remote employees to use.”

The poll also points out the deficiencies in preparing company networks to support secure remote access. According to the findings, only 23 percent have anti-virus software on their computers and laptops, just 16 percent offer an SSL-VPN connection, 14 percent have an IPSec connection, and 9 percent don’t even know if there’s security in place for their remote staffs. Only 34 percent of managers were confident that their organizations had disaster preparation policies including remote working; 13percent of those surveyed did not know, 27 percent had no disaster preparation plan and 27 percent had a plan that did not include remote working.

When their remote employees don’t immediately answer their home or mobile phones, managers showed some lapse of faith. Nearly a quarter think their employees are running household errands or shuttling the kids around, and 9 percent believe they are being deliberately ignored.