Poor connectivity hinders remote working

‘Access anxiety’ is affecting one in four British executives as they consistently experience difficulties accessing corporate IT resources on their mobile devices. Research conducted in June this year by IRB on behalf of access infrastructure provider Citrix, shows that mobile working is still not as easy as it should be. For example, it takes British workers on average 3.8 minutes to gain external access to email when working offsite, while mobile workers who need external access daily waste up to 24 hours annually getting connected. So real is the problem that 32% of executives said they take into account quality of laptops and other mobile devices provided by prospective employees, and 14% even said they would take a pay cut in exchange for better external access. On the management side, 70% of IT managers said they get numerous calls every week from employees unable to gain external access to company IT resources – and 5% said they spend up to a day every week resolving those calls. Lewis Gee, managing director of Citrix UK, says: “It’s clear that there has been great leaps in mobile technology... However, companies may need to focus on developing more efficient access infrastructures to facilitate mobile working.”