Small and medium sized businesses (SMBs) in the Asia-Pacific region are not meeting their employees’ expectations to be more productive, a new Microsoft study has found.
Indeed, just 35 per cent of employees working for SMBs have formal policies that support remote working, even though 74 per cent of them consider themselves to be mobile workers.
The study polled 2,000 people working for SMBs with less than 250 employees in 10 markets including Australia, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Indonesia, New Zealand, Philippines, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand and Vietnam.
In Singapore, 52 per cent of SMB employees say they do not have the collaboration tools to be productive, even though a majority of them (65 per cent) say they are expected to respond to internal stakeholders within a minimum timeframe of four hours.
Additionally, 41 per cent of Singapore employees in managerial positions say they are equipped with tools to be responsive. That figure drops to 29 per cent for those in non-managerial positions.
The results are hardly surprisingly, given that SMBs in mature markets such as Singapore may be held back by stricter policies and legacy work processes, even though productivity tools are more readily available than in developing markets.
In the Philippines and Vietnam, some 80 per cent of SMB employees say they are already using four to five productivity tools such as file sharing and document collaboration software.
To bridge the technology gap, Microsoft suggested some steps that SMBs can take:
Work from any device: with more than 52 per cent of employees bringing their own devices to work – smartphones, tablets, laptops – SMBs should enable workers to share ideas and provide them with real-time insights on the business.
Enable secure remote working: deploy enterprise grade solutions with easy device management on Windows Intune, data privacy and security policies which protect companies and their employees on Office 365.
Democratise access to technology: Productivity tools need to be available across the workforce and not just limited to managers.
Because of productivity and cyber security issues, many of the SMB’s are now deploying Business VPN by PureVPN within their organization for secure remote access and online data protection.