Today’s working population places great value on the importance of pleasure and the pursuit of happiness in life just as much as others. To make it a reality, managers are now providing their workforces with mobile devices and smartphones so employees can work remotely. Also, the growing importance of flexible working hours has contributed to the realization of pleasure and happiness in the business environment.
More and more people around the world are choosing to work from multiple locations, requiring a greater need for technology-enabled flexibility. Having realized this, employers have provided devices such as mobiles or smartphones to over 24 percent of the workforce.
The ability to work flexibly means that currently, 20 percent of employees are already working from home during evenings, either because they prioritize time at home, or in order to handle the dynamics and requirements of their workplace better. These factors are leading to a change in workers’ attitudes towards how they use technology as a means of integrating their professional and personal lives.
The downside
However, this new level of flexibility could also have a downside. As employees seek to work anytime, anywhere, the development and adoption of new technology and devices is also playing a role in blurring the boundaries between professional and personal lives. A third of the working population believe that personal technology devices are very important for work.
The average time spent on personal mobile devices for work is far greater than the time spent on PCs. The working population also spends more time downloading apps than the rest. Of the average time spent on apps in a day, employees spend 20 percent of the time on business apps such as MS Office, Microsoft Lync and Polaris Office.
Half of employees use their personal mobile phones for professional purposes, and spend an average of 32 percent of their time working on them. A third of employees use their personal desktops/laptops (PCs) for work purposes and spend over 30 percent of their overall time on these devices for work-related tasks.
On average, irrespective of the device preferred for work, consumers chose to spend more time on their mobile phones. This suggests that the need for mobility is universal.
In countries where lower importance is placed on using personal devices for work, the proportion of time spent on mobile phones for work (47 percent) is greater than the time spent on PCs (39 percent). Conversely, in countries where a higher importance is placed on using personal devices for work, the share of time spent on mobile phones for work (32 percent) is less than the time spent on PCs (35 percent).
According to the report, white collar employees who are internet users in developing countries such as Brazil, China and Mexico are ahead of advanced economies in terms of app downloads – although combined blue and white collar worker app download rates are highest in the US. Working people in India who use the internet on Android smartphones spend more time using business apps on their phones than their counterparts in countries such as Japan, the UK and the US.
The report examines consumer opinions from a professional perspective, and is based on the analysis of more than 47,000 interviews conducted among a wide selection of workers in 23 countries around the world. The objective was to discover people’s attitudes to flexible working conditions, and how they were managing with them. Participants include both blue and white collar workers, as well as full- and part-time employees.
