A third of companies caught unprepared by shift to home working

New research out today finds that 36 percent of companies weren't prepared to support the large-scale and abrupt transition to a remote workforce forced by COVID-19 measures.

The study, from managed cloud provider Navisite, of more than 100 executives and IT professionals in the US reveals that, as a result, 51 percent experienced IT pains during the transition process, with 29 percent reporting that they are still facing issues.

Before COVID-19, only 14 percent of companies had more than half of their employees working from home. Since the pandemic more than 64 percent of companies now have more than half of their workforce remote.

While 61 percent of respondents say that all of the IT issues they experienced during the transition have been solved, almost a quarter (24 percent) admit that only some of their issues have been fixed, and an additional five percent say that none of them have been resolved.

Despite this it seems that the change is something that will last into the long term, 83 percent of respondents believe their companies will be continuing with more liberal work-from-home policies post-COVID 19.

Potential barriers to this include poor home internet bandwidth (49 percent), increased security and compliance risks (46 percent), home user negligence or inappropriate use of corporate devices (20 percent), and lack of staffing resources to manage the large number of remote users (13 percent).

The report's authors note, "The goal of the survey was to understand the impact of this massive worker relocation on business operations. The research found that a significant number of organizations were not prepared to support a large-scale work-from home model in such a fast time frame. As a result, many organizations experienced IT pains during the transition process, with some still battling these issues. The survey also uncovered a list of concerns that respondents have about supporting work-from-home employees in the months ahead -- concerns that must be addressed if remote policies are here to stay."

The full report is available from the Navisite website.

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