With the Covid-19 crises, everything has shifted to online , businesses are now being run at home and a new work from home situation has taken place leading to 58% of the US employees to work remotely. In order to learn more about the common tech issues that arise and how they are resolved and how they effect the job productivity, nearly 1000 people were surveyed by IMA and were asked about their working from home experiences.
More than half of these people reported themselves for experiencing tech issues and 1 in 3 said that these issues lead them to an extreme stress level. This extreme stress can affect the work place productivity as well as can cause health issues such as heart diseases and mental disorders.
The most common tech issues that kept arising were lack of internet speed due to slow internet connection (56%) , slow devices up to 50% , and slow downloading of files (32%). Other stressful problems included combating a virus or the backup options. Additional problems lead by tech issues is that these problems are not fixed by the employer and this is why 47% of these employees had to spend their own money to get their device fixed. An average $4000 are being saved by a remote worker annually, but 20% of these workers had to spend $100 or more in getting their tech issues resolved. Less than 3% spent no money in getting these issues resolved. Using your own money to get device fixed can cause financial stress from already existing tech problems.
The survey also showed that since Covid-19, most of the employees found their IT department becoming increasingly helpful. Whenever the employee would contact them, the IT team was found to be very helpful or somewhat helpful however, 31% of these employees didn’t reach out their IT department for help while experiencing issues and 1 in 5 didn’t even ask for help from their employers in any way. However, despite employees not taking help from their IT section, yet still this IT department managed to create an impact on workplace productivity, according to the survey.
Majority of the employees across all company sizes, were satisfied with their IT department’s help. Companies with 501+ employees reported a satisfaction with IT help from 80% of their workers and the highest percentage recorded of employees being satisfied with IT department was found to be 83% in companies holding 51 to 100 employees.
IT department has an important role in maintaining productivity. Poorly resolved tech issues can impart a great toll on job satisfaction while 55% of the employees who got satisfactory help were found to be more satisfied with their job while 19% of those who were not satisfied with the help provided, could say the same. A satisfactory help from IT department did not just increased the work productivity but it also increased the level of motivation for the employees. Motivation can become problematic for both in and out of workplace in the ongoing pandemic situation.
Total 985 people took part in this survey, 52% of them were men while 48% were women. They ranged in age from 18 to 88 years with 38 as an average and 11 as standard deviation.
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