Citrix research: Bosses and workers don't see eye to eye over hybrid work
- Reference: 1654689609
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2022/06/08/work_rebalanced/
- Source link:
The report, dubbed "Work rebalanced"
[1]PDF
was drawn from the views of 900 business leaders and 1,800 employees across the globe, including in the US, the UK, Australia, France, Germany, Japan, Mexico, and the Netherlands.80 percent of business leaders have either installed monitoring software or are considering it...
In line with the Great Resignation, a large chunk of employees (in the case of this report, almost a fifth) are pondering changing jobs, although Citrix founds 63 percent considered their employer a "good place to work."
"Offering flexible, hybrid working is now essential," said the report.
However, overall, less than half of the employees surveyed said they trusted their employers (the figure was 57 percent for hybrid workers and 41 and 42 percent for office and remote workers respectively.)
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And while 67 percent of leaders said they trusted their employees, half reckoned that workers, when out of sight, didn't work as hard. This rose to 70 percent for leaders in the financial services sector.
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Just under half said they had gone so far as to have monitoring software installed on their employee's computers, and a further 32 percent were pondering a similar move. The report said "a total of 80 percent of business leaders have either installed monitoring software or are considering it."
The figures paint a picture of mistrust as employers and employees alike attempt to adjust to a way of working that was still very much only in the discussion phase a few short years ago, but is now an expectation.
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The majority of employees surveyed reckoned the experience of the last couple of years had made it clear that empathy is a critical leadership quality. Installing monitoring software will, at a stroke, undermine that trust.
"Workers that feel trusted by their managers also feel valued by their employers on the whole.
Thirty-four percent of employers surveyed offered no location flexibility, 28 percent insisted on complete office working, while a meagre 6 percent had a "no office" option for employees.
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Less than half of the business leaders surveyed (49 percent) reckoned their organization had decent levels of staff retention, however.
It is, after all, a competitive marketplace out there, [7]as a recent rant by a senior software engineer on LinkedIn demonstrated . Among other gripes, commenters on the thread complained that recruiters were advertising the legal minimum as benefits, hiding salary information during recruitment processes, and lying about giving bonuses.
[8]Citrix spreads its Desktop as a Service across Google and Azure clouds
[9]Citrix ADC helps IT to modernise and keep businesses resilient
[10]Citrix acquired by private equity, will be paired with Tibco in $16.5bn deal
[11]What? Apple products need management?! Cupertino intros device management for SMBs
Other recent moves aimed at improving retention include a massive six-month trial that started in the UK this month paying workers a full-time five-day-a-week salary for [12]four days a week of work . Over in the Netherlands, Dell is hoping to attract techies who aren't keen to be tied down for 40 hours per week with its own trial.
A 31-country, 31,000-person [13]Microsoft survey in March reported that 54 percent of managers said leadership was "out of touch" with employees. Half of the leaders in IT roles said their firms needed full-time in-person staffers in 2022, while over half of the surveyed employees already performing "hybrid" work were actually considering a shift to fully remote work.
Doubts and hesitancy from leaders shouldn't creep in if organizations implement hybrid working scenarios in the right way," said Mark Sweeney, Citrix regional vice president for UK and Ireland. "It's high time we embrace a new, flexible world of work focused on outcomes and productivity, rather than presenteeism." ®
Get our [14]Tech Resources
[1] https://www.citrix.com/content/dam/citrix/en_us/documents/brochure/work-rebalanced.pdf
[2] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2YqDHn3fYSPXPD9Wquse6AgAAAAc&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[3] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44YqDHn3fYSPXPD9Wquse6AgAAAAc&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[4] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33YqDHn3fYSPXPD9Wquse6AgAAAAc&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[5] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44YqDHn3fYSPXPD9Wquse6AgAAAAc&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[6] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33YqDHn3fYSPXPD9Wquse6AgAAAAc&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[7] https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6866149710894272512/
[8] https://www.theregister.com/2022/05/05/citrix_daas_google_azure/
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2022/03/14/citrix_adc/
[10] https://www.theregister.com/2022/01/31/citrix_acquired_by_private_equity/
[11] https://www.theregister.com/2021/11/11/apple_business_essentials/
[12] https://www.theregister.com/2022/06/07/4day_work_week/
[13] https://www.theregister.com/2022/03/16/microsoft_work_trends_index/
[14] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
"paying workers a full-time five-day-a-week salary for four days a week of work."
When they get out of this mindset, maybe the average worker will be happier. Pay me a salary to do my job, and not pin it down to some arbitrary and archaic idea of how long I should be physically present somewhere. If I don't do my job, then eventually fire me. How long I spend in one place makes no difference. My work wants bums on seats again, I'm in IT support, I work better at home dealing with people remotely without distractions and demands made up on site.
Not every job can go this route understandably, but it seems like a childish exec mentality where if I have to suffer then so should everyone else. Shouldn't you want your staff to be happier where you can give that gift. If you can't, then pay them more out of your profits maybe?
Back to the office has been enough to make my daughter jump ship.
The job before the about to become ex-job was work from home with visits to the rather distant office every few weeks. The about to become ex-job quickly became work at home during lockdown and is now reverting to office. The next job will not only be work at home, work at the office wasn't even an option, in fact she's not even sure if where the UK office is if there is one. All three are similar jobs, all three can, in practice, be work from or at home (there's a difference), two obligatorily so, but one suddenly thinks they have to be office based. Go figure.
I jumped ship for the same exact reasons. My former boss could work from home, but didn't want to for whatever reason, so he figured that if he "had" to be at the office, everyone else should be too. So, even though I could work from home most of the time, with an occasional day at the office, they dragged everyone kicking and screaming back to the office full time. Add to this that my commute was 45 miles each way. So, I started looking for something else right away.
At my new job, the company is 100% work from home. Everyone works from all over the country, so there is really no reasonable way for any of us to "come in to the office".
At my previous job, I was there for 17 years. I was a one guy shop, and I wrote more than half of the software that the company ran on. I wrote the shipping software for the entire warehouse, all of the interface code between the ERP system and the e-commerce website, and customer support software for the call center.
When I told them that I'm leaving, there was full-scale panic. They asked "who's going to support all of this software when you are not here?" I politely told them that it is their problem now. Suddenly they were willing to talk about me working from home part time.
The new job was a much better job, and included about a 50% pay raise, so I wasn't even willing to talk about staying on. Oh well. They could have not been jerks about people working from home.
Really ?
" 80 percent of business leaders have either installed monitoring software or are considering it "
So that is going to be your excuse to drag everyone back into the office ? Monitoring software.
Is there going to be any monitoring of management PCs ? I guess not.
We have not read any reports of reduction of productivity during the lockdowns, but now, all of a sudden, management is worried that we might not be 100% dedicated to our work.
I have in mind a saying (don't remember how it goes) about how, if you suspect someone of something, it's because you yourself are capable of it.
Re: "80 percent of business leaders have either installed monitoring software or are considering it"
In several (most?) European countries - including the last 3 I've worked in - that's illegal
Re: Really ?
"I have in mind a saying (don't remember how it goes) about how, if you suspect someone of something, it's because you yourself are capable of it"
Every accusation is a confession.
Re: Really ?
At my first paying job back in the 90s they had installed I think it was Internet Manager by Elron software just before I started(I looked it up again recently on archive.org to confirm the name). My friend who was in the IT dept got me the position in a new "startup" within the company. The parent company was a 24/7 manufacturing shop. One night someone caught the "shop floor" employees browsing porn in the middle of the night, so they decided to install this software to block porn mostly. I guess it was a transparent proxy of sorts, it routed all internet traffic somehow through my friend's desktop computer (or perhaps just the monitoring aspect), and he could see in real time what every url people were looking at, and it would flag stuff for him to block etc.
The #1 offender (by far) was the VP/brother of the owner of the company. He may of been a co owner to some degree I'm not sure, he was also the head of HR for a while after the HR person left. It also generated a list of top users of internet bandwidth, I was #1 pretty much every time I believe in large part because I used a screensaver (wow can't believe I remember the name now) called PointCast(?) it was a really cool (to me anyway) news ticker thing that pulled in tons of data. They would give me shit for being the top user (by a big margin) every month.
He made a point to browse mostly non english porn sites which the monitoring software had trouble flagging automatically. But he would sit in his office and just browse away and my friend would block the sites in real time on some days. I so wanted to pick up the phone and call him and say something like "Oh wow that's a great site don't you think? I'll save that for myself for later.."
This of course was well before the days of HTTPS being common so everything was clear text.
Every computer I've ever used at a company in my 25 year career has been setup by myself. The last company I was at where I did not have some control of IT systems(despite not officially being in IT since 2002) was about 2006ish. I specifically recall the IT admin guy getting frustrated with my computer, which was Windows XP but I had replaced the Explorer shell with LiteStep (similar to AfterStep which I liked at the time). He couldn't figure out how to do things so he would ask me to do stuff like open control panel for him so he could do something(rare occasion). I don't recall the reason(s) why he would want/need to do something to that computer maybe I asked him, not sure.
Hanlon strikes again
"The figures paint a picture of mistrust"
Or they paint a picture of incompetence on the part of management, which is not able to define clear deliverables and deadlines. Possibly also because they, at least in part, benefit from the fuzziness.