TORONTO – One third of full time employed Canadians would give up salary, vacation or benefits to work remotely, according to a survey conducted by Harris Decima on behalf of Rogers Communications.
The Rogers Connected Workplace report evaluates Canadians’ insights and attitudes towards technology driving the move to a connected workplace. It also found that over half of Canadians – including both Baby Boomers and Generation Y – think it’s important to work with the latest technologies and do so from anywhere, but they don’t have access to resources or workplace policies to make this a reality. And these elements will be increasingly important to decisions on future employment.
Four major trends emerged from the research:
1. Canadians willing to sacrifice salary and vacation days to work from anywhere.
• One third of Canadians (33%) say they would sacrifice something (including salary, vacation days and employee benefits) to work remotely;
• Over half (59%) of Canadians agree in the future, flexible work hours and the ability to work from anywhere will be top priorities in their choice of employer.
2. Canadians desire access to the latest tech but don’t want to lose face-to-face interactions.
• Job satisfaction could increase for almost half (47%) of Canadians if employers provided the latest technology tools and services;
• Baby boomers are just as likely as their Gen Y counterparts to attribute access to the latest technology as being important (70% and 66%, respectively);
• Almost eight in ten (76%) of Canadians agree collaborative workplaces make them more productive.
3. Canadians willing to erase personal and professional lines (‘Bring Your Own Device’).
• A quarter of Canadian smartphone users (23%) who carry two smartphones do so because their employer doesn’t allow them to connect their device to the company server;
• Over half of Canadians (54%) who use their smartphone for personal and professional purposes are comfortable with employer-enforcing security policies.
4. Laptops and tablets are future devices of choice for Canadian workers over desktop PCs.
• Today, Canadians spend the majority of their workday using traditional workplace devices such as desktop computers (45%) and landlines (10%)
• In the future, Canadians would prefer to use laptops (40%), tablets (15%), and smartphones (10%) as primary work devices.
An online survey was conducted by Harris/Decima among a national sample of n=1,001 Canadian panelists, aged 18+ who are employed in a full time position at their company/organization and are not self-employed.
The survey was administered in both English and French between October 17 – 30, 2013, and the data is weighted to replicate the actual population distribution by age, gender and region according to the 2011 Census.
