Mobile Workforce Report

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Mobile Workforce Survey Results:

Section 3: Mobilocracy and the mobile lifestyle

Much has been made of the issue of the ongoing consumerization of technology in the workplace. The blurring of the boundaries between personal and business devices and usage has presented IT departments with a number of distinct challenges. However, the phrase “consumerization” really only covers part of the new wave of mobility headaches which are now facing IT departments. Consumerization is just one cog in the rise of the mobilocracy – the new order in the enterprise where mobility (and mobile workers in particular), is often defining the IT strategy.

This mobilocracy is in many respects the manifestation of a growing sense of entitlement amongst the global workforce. This is no value judgement; it’s merely the way employees today have become accustomed to being connected in their personal lives, bringing this same mindset into the workplace. End users are also consumers and are becoming used to having access to a broader array of technology than ever before – smartphones, tablets, netbooks, notebooks, etc. The perspective they gain outside of the corporate world is influencing and informing their attitudes towards mobility and productivity in the workplace.

Today’s mobile employees are increasingly more sophisticated in troubleshooting technical issues than a generation ago, and they expect to play a larger role in technology decisions within their companies – while still relying on IT for education and training. In fact, 94 percent of mobile workers indicated they would troubleshoot a problem themselves, while 13 percent would not contact the IT help desk at any point in the process when they had a technical problem.

When the mobilocracy has a technical problem at work, they take the following five steps:

Process	Step 1	Step 2	Step 3	Step 4	Step 5
Troubleshoot it themselves (94%)	70%	12%	7%	4%	4%
Search using a search engine (88%)	13%	41%	20%	12%	7%
Search an internal corporate online resource (88%)	4%	15%	22%	21%	16%
Contact the IT help desk (87%)	7%	12%	19%	20%	30%
Consult a user manual (78%)	3%	11%	21%	24%	21%

Figure 15: What is your process for resolving a technical problem at work? What do you do first, what do you do last?

Along with the rise of the mobilocracy, comes the increase of the trivialization of place. Work is something people do, not a place they need to go to. We believe where people work will matter less and less for a number of reasons, from improved productivity, to decreased carbon footprint, and reduced office expenditure.

This quarter, we asked where mobile workers felt most productive. The mobile workforce still felt most productive in the office (46 percent), followed by working from home (38 percent). For female mobile workers, 43 percent felt most productive in the office, and 43 percent felt most productive at home. Male workers responses were more in line with the average for the survey.

Figure 16: Where do you feel you are most productive?

Here is where we identified a generation gap, but not what you might think. Those 35 and older felt more productive working outside of the office (home, café, or traveling), than those 34 and under. Despite the popular perception that workers under 34 are the “work-anywhere generation,” the majority felt most productive working in the office (53 percent). This probably has to do with the seniority and role that the employee plays in the organization. Individual contributors need to be team players within an organization, relying more on in-person collaboration with peers to get their jobs done.

Figure 17: Where do you feel you are most productive? (By age group.)

On the flipside, mobile workers felt least productive when they traveled or commuted. 30 percent felt least productive on an airplane and 29 percent felt least productive on public transportation. Today, airplane travel and public transportation are still underserved when it comes to connectivity.

Figure 18: Where do you feel you are least productive?

With a hyper-connected workforce, something needs to give. At some point social boundaries will be redefined – mobile employees will develop coping strategies to deal with hyper-connectivity and the increasing demands on their attention. Most will find ways to redefine their social boundaries between work and personal time.

We asked if this hyper-connected mobile workforce had started to implement digital downtime every day; a time during their waking hours when they purposely disconnected from technology. We found that 27 percent of mobile workers had implemented digital downtime every day. Female mobile workers were more likely to have instituted digital downtime (34 percent) followed by those in the 45 to 54 age group (30 percent).

Figure 19:Have you instituted any “Digital Downtime” (a time during your waking hours when you purposely disconnect completely from technology) into your day?

Recommendations for IT:

The rise of the mobilocracy presents an opportunity for IT departments to engage employees with their own IT support and become a strong resource by providing training, educational materials, and delivering online tools, so that employees can troubleshoot issues themselves. The survey shows this is what mobile workers prefer to do anyway.
IT managers have an opportunity to improve the productivity of their mobile employees, by making it easier for employees to access corporate services from any location with consistent login and screens. IT should also reduce the barrier to connect, requiring little intervention from employees to get connected, but at the same time automating virus and security protections.