Man working from home in pjs Pivotal HR Solutions Blog

Only 43% of Canadian employees are offered home remote working options; 61% prefer to work remotely

Technological advances have transformed how operations are conducted in various sectors. One area transforming is how employees work where advances in ICT have interconnected the world, eliminating the limitations imposed by boundaries and geographical locations. Currently, the number of people working remotely away from physical offices and workplaces is increasing rapidly. Especially in competitive scenarios, HR must keep with the times by adapting to changes effected by advances in technology.

Work remotely Pivotal HR Solutions BlogAccording to a survey only

“43% of Canadian employees say that the company they work for offers remote work options with 64% of those surveyed said they take advantage of the opportunity to work remotely.”

Of the 64%, 61% work from home while the remaining 3% work from remote locations such as shared office spaces or café. The findings of this survey highlight a mismatch between strategies used by HR and the desires of employees. While HR focuses on the workplace defined by brick and mortar, more employees are harboring aspirations to work away from a physical office or workplace in companies’ premises.

 

This trend is expected to increase as the workforce is increasingly dominated by millennials and Gen Z. “It’s important for organizations to keep their finger on the pulse of what attracts job seekers,” says David King, senior district president of Robert Half. To this end, HR should be at the frontline effecting the changes required to increase “the ability to work remotely” because this is “clearly an offering many professionals look for,” David says.

 

Home working Pivotal HR Solutions Blog

 

It is important to note that the transformation towards a remote-working structure is not sudden but gradual. This implies that the HR can introduce it as an “alternative work option to entice top talent,” says David. It requires the assessment of where to introduce it within the organization to offer “workers the flexibility they want, without compromising business goals,” he added.

Main challenge: technology

The main challenge impending employees working from the office from exploiting the alternative of working remotely is inadequate technology to facilitate this transformation.

According to the survey, 47% of the remaining 36% choose to work from the office due to the lack of technology to enable them to work away from the office.

Additionally, inadequate technological capacity reduces the productivity of 31% of employees working away from the office, with 25% of them missing the opportunities offered by being physically present within the physical workplace. Based on these findings, organizations need to adopt technologies that will enable their employees to work remotely.

Adopting technologies to enable employees does not only improve productivity and the bottom line but also the well-being of employees. From time immemorial, the imbalance between the time spent in the office and with family and friends has been threatening the family unit and degrading social fabric in various societies across the world. A report from the U.K. indicates that 57% and 54% of employees argued with their spouses and kids, respectively, because they spend too much time in the office. Another survey by the CV Recruiter Library found that “54% of employees in the U.K. suffer from loneliness in the workplace.”

All these findings highlight why it is important for HR and the entire top-management to adopt strategies and technologies to enable their employees not only to work remotely but also to work away from the office more effectively.


Do you need help building a remote-from-home work program in your workplace? Do you need to manage your home working programs more effectively? Contact the experts at Pivotal HR Solutions:

Contact Pivotal

Leave a Comment

Scroll to Top