Seventy-eight per cent of Irish workers are working outside the office each week, according to a new survey by Citrix Systems Ireland.
Some 38pc of respondents said they find they are much more productive working outside of the office. Sixty per cent said they are “just as” productive.
Mobile working is becoming a more attractive style of working, with an increasing array of devices available to consumers.
Fifty-six per cent of the people surveyed reported they use personal devices, such as smartphones, laptops and iPads for work purposes. Ninety-seven per cent of Irish workers said they are already using devices to perform every day tasks, such as banking, restaurant reservations and shopping, as opposed to doing these tasks in person.
The research showed that the days of one PC per family are over, with 46pc of workers in the country saying they use three or more devices on a daily basis. Some 74pc of Irish workers reported they still travel with a laptop but 57pc said they also travel with a smartphone. Ten per cent said they travel with tablets, and this number is expected to increase in the next year.
The survey revealed that Irish workers are tech savvy, with 80pc of respondents claiming they are self-reliant when it comes to IT management, managing the device and installing new applications on their own. Fifty-one per cent of respondents said they see the value in cloud computing and 28pc of this group access applications every day.
“As companies look to do more with their available time and resources, the practise of allowing employees to work from various locations is becoming critical to business performance,” said Niall Gilmore, country manager, Citrix Systems Ireland.
“The ability to work from anywhere can make a huge difference to individual and organisational productivity and to employees’ work-life balance. What we are seeing in Ireland is that workers are tech-savvy and they’re not afraid to use this knowledge to benefit their work ‘experience’. In turn, organisations are recognising the benefits of a mobile workforce in terms of productivity, efficiency and cost saving.”
Francis O’Haire, technical director, DataSolutions, said: “These latest findings demonstrate the demand for the ‘bring your own’ concept by workers, which in turn is encouraging companies to facilitate this multi-device workforce. Our customers are realising that they can centralise data, desktops and applications securely while also delivering this information to any device using virtualisation technology. The result is that employees are connected to the corporate network, no matter what device they are using.”
