Mobile Workforce Report Q2 2011: Page 1: Introduction | Page 2: Redefining Social Boundaries | Page 3: The Right Tools for the Job | Page 4: On the Road with Mobile Workers | Page 5: Conclusion
Conclusion
Social boundaries are being redefined and workforce rules are being rewritten – whether we like it or not. While social boundaries define how polite society behaves, this new paradigm also blurs the lines between personal and public, work and life.
Mobile workers have several things in common. They have the appropriate tools of their trade: laptops, smartphones and increasingly tablets. In fact, this population is approaching the 100 percent penetration mark for smartphones, while at the same time they are surpassing the majority mark for tablets. The mobile stack – the trinity of devices – is indeed the new unit of computing for mobile workers as increasingly they are carrying a laptop, a smartphone, and a tablet.
But what does smartphone saturation mean to mobile workers? Smartphones and tablets, for that matter, are deeply personal devices and occupy more of the mobile workforce’s free time than ever before. We have brought them into our bedrooms, and they keep us up at night with gentle pings letting us know that the rest of the world has not gone to sleep. We also consult them before we start our workday, to reassure ourselves that we didn’t miss anything, to collaborate with a co-worker in a different time zone, or to fight a work issue that has erupted while we slept.
In this quarter’s report, we not only saw a redefinition of social boundaries, but a change in the tools and applications that mobile employees use as they adapt to the new work modus operandi. New productivity applications, like note taking, are gaining legs among the highly mobile workers, and as our tools evolve, our preferences for the right tool for the job are also changing.
Most mobile workers are constantly connected, highly responsive, and ready to be engaged outside of traditional office hours. They telecommute and travel on business. Their mobility helps them stay competitive in a fast-paced and challenging business environment. They manage to work 240 hours longer annually than their less mobile peers. Work does not keep them up at night, and their mobility does not cause friction in their personal relationships – more than half store their smartphone out of arm’s reach. Still, how the mobilocracy defines their personal boundaries determines the effects of their mobility on their work and their personal life.
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Recommendations for IT: We have entered a collaborative era, and employees are increasingly comfortable using mobile business applications outside of email. There is a huge opportunity for companies to look outside the traditional front office suite for applications that employees will find extremely useful. While distributing business applications for smartphones and tablets to employees remains a challenge, most employees are comfortable getting their business applications from a variety of sources, including application stores. Also, make sure to support proper password policies and data security even for personal devices. This is a good consideration to help protect the data. Speed often matters. Most mobile employees will pay for a faster Wi-Fi connection even when free Wi-Fi is available. Travel is still a fact of life and is increasing in some areas. Make sure that the cost of mobility does not rise out of control. IT should implement reports and policies to help ensure that 3G roaming is not abused and free Wi-Fi is used when practical. The user experience should be simple so that support requirements are not bogging down IT. |
Mobile Workforce Report Q2 2011: Page 1: Introduction | Page 2: Redefining Social Boundaries | Page 3: The Right Tools for the Job | Page 4: On the Road with Mobile Workers | Page 5: Conclusion
