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Results Survey on telework in the Netherlands


surveyAmsterdam – Teleworking, or distant teamworking, is a hot topic. According to Gartner Research, within 10 years employees will work together remotely for more than 75% of the time.
DistantTeamwork has asked organisations in The Netherlands via an on-line survey what position the topic of working together at a distance has within their strategy and processes. Useful responses were received from in total 130 organisations, ranging from small (2 – 10 employees) to very large (> 500 employees).

TELEWORKING:
WE WANT TO, BUT DON’T DO IT

Organisations indicate that teleworking leads to more effective collaboration, but in practice it is still hardly done.

These are the key insights that we received from the survey:

  • More than 69% of the respondents experience effective distant teamworking as a problem area in doing their jobs well. For large organisations, with more than 10 employees, this group is even larger, more than 78%.
  • In organisations with multiple locations, employees (still) travel too much between these locations, indicate more than 450% of respondents.
  • Technology tools for distant teamwork are underutilised, even though they are widely available.
  • Employees experience knowledge exchange, better collaboration within teams and improved responsiveness as the key drivers for promoting distant teamwork.
  • Environmental aspects of teleworking, in particular reduction of kilometers driven, has a surprisingly low priority.
  • Organisation and culture, and not the technology, are the largest barriers to adopting new ways of working together.
  • 50% of the respondents report activities focused at improving distant teamwork within their organisations. In only 37% of the cases was this done on the basis of structured policies.
  • Although the topic gets management attention more and more often, a structured approach to get these new ways of working propoerly implemented in organisations is still missing: the intention is there, but it is done rarely.
DistantTeamwork is an independent consultancy platform made up by experts in the area of distant teamworking. They advise and coach organisations with the introduction of new ways of working together, using information technology tools.