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The importance of mobile and cloud-based ways of working continues to grow

The advantage of a flexible way of working because of mobile and cloud technologies to outweigh the concerns and risks of 86 percent of executives and managing director of small and medium-sized enterprises. These are the results of a global study among 1.250 enterprises in Europe, North America and Canada by YouGov on behalf of Citrix.

Better productivity and image enhancement

The increase of productivity 48 percent and thus about the half of the respondents expect from the capabilities of flexible ways of working. 32 percent hope for an enhancement of their image as an employer. Approximately a quarter (23 percent) see in mobile ways of working a better compensation of a work-life balance, especially for employed parents (29 percent). In addition 39 percent see an improved integration of external teams and 28 percent an advantage for business continuity.

Concerns with private life

However, mobile ways of working also cause concerns. The largest to refer to the separation of private and work life (41 percent) and the apprehension, employees to obliged themselves for after hours. Although half of the respondend enterprises implemented mobile was of working, however, they encounter concerns with fixed oral or written regulations, controlling the employees. Certainly these restrictions to contradict to the wish to organize the work with self-reliance. Thereto the majority of 73 percent refuse rules to organize flexible and mobile ways of working in timeframes since the basically idea of flexible and mobile ways of working are restricted. Otherwise employees are not able to choose the location and time on their own anymore to be more productive and find their work-life balance.

Mobile and cloud-based ways of working are important

For most of us the worklife not to occur in a local limited area in a long time. Instead we live in a global, connected and especially mobile world from which each of us should gain its main benefits to become more productive and thus more profitable for the company but simultaneously have a balanced private life.

Modern enterprises today need to offer their employees the capabilities/ liberties to work from wherever they want. This must not be the Starbucks at the corner. But it offers the opportunity to withdraw in more creative areas like co-working spaces and thus obtain other impressions and opinions or get feedbacks of potential customer or partner. The biggest advantage consists in the possibility to escape from the daily outine in the office and be able to develop further. Cloud and mobile technologies to enable this like not any other technologies before.

The hazard to work overtime or even to end up in a burnout plays constantly in today’s working environment. But this is not an issue of flexbile respectively mobile ways of working. To the contrary, an employee obtains the liberty to “take time out” in a personal or even currently environment in order to balance. However, employees need to assume more responsibility to reach the agreed goals and simultaneously take care and organize itself to continue to have a private life. Whereby the employer should also help to make sure to capture the attention.

By Rene Buest

Rene Buest is Gartner Analyst covering Infrastructure Services & Digital Operations. Prior to that he was Director of Technology Research at Arago, Senior Analyst and Cloud Practice Lead at Crisp Research, Principal Analyst at New Age Disruption and member of the worldwide Gigaom Research Analyst Network. Rene is considered as top cloud computing analyst in Germany and one of the worldwide top analysts in this area. In addition, he is one of the world’s top cloud computing influencers and belongs to the top 100 cloud computing experts on Twitter and Google+. Since the mid-90s he is focused on the strategic use of information technology in businesses and the IT impact on our society as well as disruptive technologies.

Rene Buest is the author of numerous professional technology articles. He regularly writes for well-known IT publications like Computerwoche, CIO Magazin, LANline as well as Silicon.de and is cited in German and international media – including New York Times, Forbes Magazin, Handelsblatt, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Wirtschaftswoche, Computerwoche, CIO, Manager Magazin and Harvard Business Manager. Furthermore Rene Buest is speaker and participant of experts rounds. He is founder of CloudUser.de and writes about cloud computing, IT infrastructure, technologies, management and strategies. He holds a diploma in computer engineering from the Hochschule Bremen (Dipl.-Informatiker (FH)) as well as a M.Sc. in IT-Management and Information Systems from the FHDW Paderborn.