61% of employees feel more connected to colleagues during WFH: Survey

Contrary to popular belief, a working professional operating from home feels more connected to colleagues than being physically present at the office even after being cut off from the office ambience, a survey revealed.

A recent Kaspersky study found that 61 per cent of employees don’t feel isolated while working remotely, while 37 per cent of remote workers manage to communicate even better with their colleagues this way. However, the extensive use of non-corporate communication services enables better connections but it increases the level of risk from unmonitored IT resources. 

One reason for better connections formed with colleagues, reported by more than half of employees, could be the extensive use of non-corporate communication services that have increased, according to the survey. Communicating for work purposes via non-corporate email services has increased to 69 per cent from 67 per cent, non-corporate messenger use has risen from 61 to 64 per cent, use of non-corporate resource planning software surged to 45 per cent from 42 per cent, web-conferencing platforms from 83 to 86 per cent, and social networks from 67 to 70 per cent. 

“People usually use additional tools for good reasons. And there is nothing wrong with employees trying to make their work and communications more convenient. Of course, non-corporate services or applications are not necessarily malicious (though this is possible too). IT departments also don't control access to shadow services and employees can compromise valuable corporate information such as by adding new members to an unauthorised work chat or not deleting former co-workers from it,” explained Andrey Evdokimov, Head of Information Security at Kaspersky. 

During 2020, people and organisations have been through many changes. The epidemiological situation and subsequent lockdown restrictions around the globe seriously affected the communication aspect of people’s private and working life. The new conditions created different challenges, and social isolation along with a lack of communication with colleagues – these were among the most discussed concerns for remote employees, as per the report.

Kaspersky surveyed 4,303 IT workers from 31 countries to learn how businesses and people have managed to adjust to the new reality and how the new work formats correlate with employee wellbeing in the long-term. While the majority of employees has successfully transitioned to the digital communications era, a substantial number of respondents couldn’t adopt the remote way of life and still feel isolated (39 per cent) while working at home. Given the fact that loneliness contributes to employee burnout, not less than other demotivating factors like exhaustion and anxiety, this statistic should be a matter of concern for business executives, the report claimed.