How Well Did IT Do Migrating Employees to Remote Working?

I don’t need to tell you that much has changed during 2020 thanks to the COVID-19 crisis. Not only for IT service management (ITSM) and IT support but also all of us as employees and citizens of the world. We’ve had to change the way that we work (in terms of the forced homeworking for many), and how we live (in terms of social distancing and lockdowns), with the result of the former changing various elements of traditional IT service delivery and support.

These changes can be viewed through both an IT and an end-user lens. With the latter now potentially working in an alien environment, even though it’s their home, and perhaps using different IT equipment, software, and services (and with differing levels of success). While the former has had to change its traditional service and support practices to accommodate the end-user changes. In particular, increased use of remote support tools (given that many employees are now working at home) and self-service/help capabilities.

This blog examines the various changes and uses employee experience feedback data from HappySignals to better understand how well IT’s new ways of working are performing from an employee perspective.

This blog examines the various changes made in the way IT support works, using employee experience feedback data to better understand how well IT’s new ways of working are performing from an employee perspective. Click To Tweet

Recognizing that the employee-related changes will take time

Before analyzing the HappySignals data, there’s a need to appreciate that the changes brought about by the COVID-19 crisis aren’t as simple as switching over from the old to the new. This applies to both IT support personnel and the employees they support.

For employees who are working at home for the first time, it’ll be a steep learning curve. Particularly for those who’ve been office workers for multiple decades. There are so many differences that’ll impact how they work, the issues and requests that they present to IT support, and how they perceive the IT service and support they receive.

For example, there’s the remoteness of home working – which affects how individuals and teams work together – without the ability to quickly convene in an office meeting room, to simply shout across a bank of desks for help, or to informally chat about an issue with a colleague while fetching a coffee. There are the technology differences that have already been mentioned and, from an IT support perspective, employees have lost the easy ability to walk up to an IT-savvy colleague, at a nearby desk, to get immediate IT-related guidance (and thus avoiding a call to the IT service desk).  Plus, of course, there are the far more complicated, and potentially personal, factors to consider that relate to an employee’s ability to effectively work from home.

Recognizing that the IT support changes didn’t have the luxury of time

With the sudden call for home-based working, IT support teams needed to immediately react. Made more difficult because, for many employees, it was a case of not being able to leave their home. Let alone being able to pop into the office to pick up everything they needed for homeworking. There was an immediate need to set up these employees with home working capabilities – which included a mix of things, from the required technology (including VPNs) to higher levels of support availability.

And there’s probably not an IT service desk or IT support team anywhere that didn’t pull out all the stops to meet the new demands on them, including the increase in ticket volumes that the migration to home working brought with it. There’s so much credit due to the many IT support professionals out there. Plus, their IT colleagues who also pitched in with what was, and potentially still is, a massive undertaking.

But how did the now remote-working employees feel about the IT service and support they received?

How did the now remote-working employees feel about the IT service and support they received in their move to home working (in light of #COVID19)? @Joe_the_IT_Guy explores in this article. #ITSM Click To Tweet

The initial HappySignals data on remote-worker happiness with their IT

Employee experience management company HappySignals started to measure the employee experience for homeworkers in the fourth week of March 2020. With their traditional feedback mechanism reimagined to better ascertain how the newly made homeworkers feel about their IT.

The HappySignals data shows that, despite all of the hard work, while the change-driven demand was being met (in the main) there was a relatively low level of employee happiness with remote worker IT – scoring in the mid-30s (ouch!).

However, and before we all run off to drown our sorrows, this has increased significantly in the following weeks such that remote workers were scoring their IT in the low-50s a month later. This score should, of course, continue to increase as the new IT support practices bed in (including, potentially, IT support personnel working from home too) and as employees become more accustomed to working at home and with the required IT solutions.

Data from @HappySignalsLtd data shows that, despite all of the hard work by #ITSupport there's been a relatively low level of employee happiness with remote worker IT – scoring in the mid-30s (ouch!). #COVID19 Click To Tweet

Understanding the reasons for lower remote worker happiness scores

The first thing to understand here is that remote workers are likely to be more frustrated with their IT support and IT per se than when they were office-based. With some contributing factors outside the control of IT. For example, the impact of homeworking, including people’s inability to get work done due to non-IT-related factors, or having to do additional work that previously wasn’t their responsibility, has to adversely affect their “tolerance levels” – in terms of receiving both service and support – as a minimum.

There are legitimate IT-related reasons for the lower scoring too. The sheer volume of issues will have caused delays in response – with these caused by both the office-to-home move itself (and the new technologies being employed) and the aforementioned fact that employees can no longer lean on their IT-savvy colleagues. Then we shouldn’t discount the required learning curve for IT support staff needing to handle new issues, perhaps using new support technologies.

So, let’s see the rising employee happiness score as a sign that we’re all improving in these challenging times. While also looking at the factors that’ll help us to improve further.

What the HappySignals data also tells us

The HappySignals feedback methodology collects the reasons for the individual employee happiness scores. So, for example, in March, 28% of negative scores were caused by network connection issues, 19% by difficulties accessing the company network, and 16% by not being able to access the needed tools. So, a large proportion of employee unhappiness is caused by connectivity, and thus productivity, issues. The first of these was top for neutral feedback too – at 33%.

Conversely, the top reasons for positive feedback in March were:

•       19% – I can easily access the tools I need
•       19% – it’s easy to reach my colleagues remotely
•       18% – remote working is efficient
•       16% – our online meetings are easy to arrange or join
•       15% – we have good practices for remote working
•       12% – image and sound quality in our online meetings are good.

These percentages changed during April, but I’m not able to “scientifically” compare the two data sets because new options were added. Please bear this in mind when looking at the top three factors in the table below:

Negative feedback factors	Neutral feedback factors	Positive feedback factors
15% – I have better equipment at the office	26% – I have better equipment at the office	12% – I can easily access the systems I need
14% – VPN access to the company network is difficult	18% – internet connection causes problems	12% – remote working is efficient
12% – internet connection causes problems	12% – VPN access to the company network is difficult	11% – I save time from commuting 11% – it’s easy to reach my colleagues remotely 11% – our online meetings are easy to arrange and join

 

However, the connectivity issues – and the impact on productivity – are still key negative feedback factors. The positive feedback factors are also still similar, along with the fact that working from home is being seen as beneficial for both the employee (commute time savings) and the employer (efficiency).

What we can all learn from the HappySignals data

There’s no doubt that most IT support teams performed miracles to get their organization’s employees set up for homeworking so quickly. We’re definitely getting better at providing homeworking technology and support but there are still issues. With connectivity to the corporate network the real killer in terms of stifling an employee’s ability to work and be productive. This needs to be a primary area of focus (and improvement), with the greater use of cloud services – that negates the need for VPN-based access to the corporate network – an obvious opportunity.

Data from @HappySignalsLtd shows that connectivity to the corporate network voted the real killer in terms of stifling an employee’s ability to work and be productive. #COVID19 #servicedesk Click To Tweet

In addition to removing this serious homeworking obstacle, there are also two key factors for higher employee happiness scores and productivity to amplify. Both relate to employees being able to do the work that they need to do, by easily:

1.     Accessing the tools they need, where the removal of connectivity issues will help
2.     Reaching and interacting with colleagues, i.e. the use of suitable collaboration and virtual meeting tools.

Hopefully, my quick assessment of how we’ve done, and continue to do, with the support of remote workers has been helpful. Please let me know if you’ve any comments or tips for others related to this blog or supporting remote workers per se.