A recent poll conducted by an American-based technology firm showed that productive work outside the office is possible.
Titled “Employee Ownership and Choice in a New World,” Workforce of the Future Survey 2020 commissioned by Cisco, revealed that nearly nine in ten workers favor a hybrid blend of office-based and remote working.
The tech firm surveyed 10,000 people who are working from home since the start of the pandemic. The respondents are from 12 markets in ten countries including UK, France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Poland, Russia,
the UAE, Switzerland, Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg.
The poll was carried out from August 11 to 25, 2020.
Philippine survey
Karrie Ilagan, Cisco Philippines managing director, said that the survey results that are specific to the Philippines found that Filipino workers want more choice about how they work.
“We have already established that people can work together while not being physically together,” she added.
Data also showed that 66% of employees want to travel less and 83% of them incorporated more exercise in their daily routine.
Ilagan, together with Hariharan S, Cisco managing director, unveiled a Webex Suite, a complete package of cloud-based collaboration, with key differentiating features that aim to serve as the foundation for inclusive hybrid work and events.
“We are bringing innovations to our portfolio with that in mind, and with Webex Suite, everyone has a seat at the table, everyone’s voice can be heard, and it’s a platform where discussions are made equitable,” Ilagan said.
She added that Cisco Webex provides strategies that can help employers with the challenges they face due to remote working.
“In the last six months, we have added 800 new features and devices to Webex all geared towards creating the most flexible and inclusive user experience for businesses who are looking to be more inclusive in their hybrid work approach and for people who continue to work from anywhere,” Hariharan said.
The cloud-based collaboration has been used by several government agencies and companies such as the Department of Health, the Senate of the Philippines, Department of Agriculture, and International Center for Beginning Beginners.
Currently, it is not available for purchase by individuals. It is only available to organizations with a minimum number of users.
Last May 4, real estate consultancy firm, JLL Philippines, surveyed 3,300 employees regarding work from home set-up. The results indicate that “only 37 percent of the workforce now feels more productive at home than in the office, as opposed to 48 percent last year.”
Over 75 percent of JLL employees have missed being in the office physically at least part of the time and prefer to work remotely 1.5 days a week, down from 2 days in a similar JLL survey last April.
Despite the evolving hybrid model in the new working environment, an increasing part of the workforce does not want to work from home at all in the future, according to the JLL survey.
