Conducted during the coronavirus pandemic, 1E unveils the findings of the industry’s largest analysis of the remote employee experience and the digital workplace in 2020.

In partnership with independent research agency Vanson Bourne, 1E surveyed employees across eight industries in the US and found that enterprise IT teams are failing to deliver a positive remote employee experience. Data shows IT has more to do in order to prepare their organizations—and employees—for a work from anywhere enterprise in the aftermath of the coronavirus pandemic.

“Never before have we had this level of insight about the experience employees have with their devices—and IT generally—in the post-COVID world,” says 1E Founder and CEO Sumir Karayi. “In the work from anywhere enterprise, endpoint management tools are the central nervous system because the endpoint is no longer just a device. Endpoints have now become much more personal and integral to the lives of all employees, enabling them to stay connected and work. This research helps businesses understand the new digital employee experience and reimagine the traditional definition of the workplace.”

Forty-six million Americans are now totally dependent on their laptop; however, they’re dealing with an influx of issues crippling the digital employee experience, he adds. At its heart, the digital work from anywhere enterprise is about putting people first and serving their needs wherever they choose to work, but the data from 1E’s latest research ‘The New Digital Workplace: Employee Experiences with Universal Remote Working Since COVID’ indicates that IT teams, along with over-burdened and ill-equipped service desks, are struggling to meet the needs of newly remote employees.

Since the start of the pandemic, 46 million people have moved from working in the office on a full-time basis to working from home full-time. That’s a significant amount of people forced into new ways of working overnight and who are totally reliant on their laptop for work and communication.

“IT must be able to understand and optimize the employee’s world through the endpoint,” Karayi says. “But what the research shows is that the speed of change has left legacy IT tools ineffective in their management of remote endpoints and the digital employee experience. This research proves that legacy tools must be replaced with a new generation of endpoint management solutions designed to cope with the complexities of the work from anywhere enterprise; they need to be real-time, autonomic, and scalable.”

US employees take huge productivity hit when working remotely as 50 million experience repeat IT issues—and then wait hours, days, and weeks for those issues to be resolved, he adds.

Almost all US knowledge workers (98%) said that device performance is critical to their ability to work remotely but 36m (53%) reported that their device performs slower outside the office and 33m (48%) flagged it as a top three issue that hinders their productivity and overall employee experience.

Twenty-five employees (37%) are also experiencing more issues working remotely, and those issues are taking much longer to resolve. 49m employees (72%) are reporting that it takes days and weeks to get issues fixed. Yet more worryingly, 50 million employees (74%) experience repeat issues.

But when issues are resolved, 46 million employees (68%) are disrupted by the service desk, with only 21 million (31%) of employees able to continue their work during the process. Eighteen million employees (26%) said they couldn’t work at all when an issue is being fixed.

“Too often we only ask IT about IT issues. What’s refreshing about this research is that employees took part and were asked how they’re coping in this new normal. The data shows how critical endpoint automation is so employees can just get their work done,” says Paul Hardy, Evangelist, Chief Innovation Office, at ServiceNow.

“The fact that 74% of employees are facing repeat issues proves that a lack of automation doesn’t just impact the employee experience, but further burdens the service desk and holds organizations back from creating meaningful value and growth. The reality is that COVID has ripped up the enterprise IT book, and it’s time to use research such as this to rewrite the norm.”

The accompanying image is courtesy of CNN.com