As Australians start to return to offices around the country, Slack research released today shows knowledge workers don’t want to go back to the way things were when it comes to flexibility. The Remote Work Tech Effect study revealed 1 in 2 respondents would look for another job if they were required to work full-time from the office, without the flexibility to work remotely.

 

Demand for collaborative tech is also at an all time high, with the right platforms and tools flagged by respondents as being critical to employee experience. An overwhelming 82% of Aussie knowledge workers said tech that enables effective communication and collaboration is integral to their wellbeing. Importantly, email is continuing to lose ground as the preferred mode of communication for work. 87% of respondents said software and apps are a more efficient way to communicate than email, and 73% said they prefer ways other than email to connect with their teams. In fact, the research found that software platforms and apps (60%) are now being used almost as commonly as email (66%) in the workplace.

 

Slack’s new study, conducted by Honeycomb Strategy, surveyed 1,000 Australian knowledge workers within organisations of 100+ employees in March 2021. This is the second iteration of The Remote Work Tech Effect study, with a similar survey carried out in October 2020. 

 

The research highlighted that decisions around work models - and whether those decisions are informed by the preferences and needs of employees - as well as the technology employers provide, will be critical factors in attracting and retaining top talent into the future. As Australian organisations reinvent how and where they work, nearly half of Aussie knowledge workers said they were not consulted by their leaders on decisions around a return to the office. Perhaps as a flow on effect, the study revealed a gap between the preferences of employees and the work models organisations were implementing. For example, 50% of respondents said they had returned full-time to the office, and yet just 42% of respondents said this was their preference. 

 

According to the study, a range of considerations related to office-based versus remote work were applied by employees when weighing up the pros and cons. Nearly half of Aussie knowledge workers said by returning to the office they would miss wearing casual clothes every day, while 44% would miss skipping the dreaded commute to work. Importantly, 47% of employees said that working from home provided a better work-life balance. However, just 17% of Aussie knowledge workers said they would prefer to never go to the office, working remotely full-time. The reasons cited for this included: a lack of social interaction (35%) and feeling disconnected from colleagues (28%). 

 

As Australian organisations seek to design a work model that suits them, leaders should have the satisfaction of their people, and importantly their ability to attract and retain talent, at the forefront of their minds. Regardless of what return to work model an organisation implements, 4 in 5 (77%) of respondents said technology had helped with workplace belonging by enabling them to feel connected to their team. And, importantly, 67% of respondents said the adoption of technology has had a positive impact on workplace culture.

 

Technology has continued to transform the way we work

Almost three quarters of respondents said the rapid adoption of tech over the course of the pandemic has had a positive impact on their industry and their organisation (70% and 68% respectively, even higher than in October 2020). 85% said technology had allowed information sharing to be efficient; 83% said it had made it possible to continue to work effectively with others; and over three quarters said technology had made it possible to work with external parties just as efficiently as if they were part of their team. Importantly, 60% felt they could work just as effectively at home as they could in the office.

 

The death of email and the rise of collaboration software

The last year has seen a significant boost in the adoption of software and apps as a response to the widespread shift to remote work, and there is increasing evidence that more organisations are moving away from email as a result. When communicating externally, software and apps (60%) are now used almost as commonly as email (66%), and 87% of respondents said software and apps are a more efficient way to communicate than email (up from 75% in October 2020). The study revealed a significant uptick in a number of productivity measures since October 2020. For example, 91% of respondents said software and apps allowed them to work more efficiently (up from 79%) and the same percentage said software and apps allowed them to easily access the information they needed to do their job (up from 78%). 

 

App proliferation remains a problem

Integration between apps remains an issue for most workers. Only 1 in 4 (24%) feel the apps they use are sufficiently integrated to allow them to work effectively. With respondents using an average of 4 apps per day, they estimated the time they spent switching between these apps at 20 minutes per day. That’s 1.4 hours a week, and nearly 73 hours (or 9 working days) a year. The pain point of juggling and navigating between apps remains a frustration for most. Over half of respondents (57%) were concerned this was eating up too much time in their workday, while 56% were frustrated by switching between different platforms to find past conversations or where files were saved. The desire for a fully integrated single platform, containing access to multiple apps was up from 75% in October 2020 to 79% in March 2021.

You can view the full results of Slack’s The Remote Work Tech Effect here.