Employees struggle to find information when working from home

New research from enterprise search company Sinequa finds 46 percent of UK employees feel it should be much easier to find the information they need to do their jobs.

In addition 71 percent say it's harder to find information on work systems than it is to find information on search engines such as Google.

People have adapted to new ways of working though with a smaller proportion (39 percent) now saying it is harder to find information when working remotely, compared to 61 percent last year. 86 percent of employees report that their organization has adapted to remote working, however less than half (48 percent) describe it as a quick and easy transition.

Even so, finding information remains harder than it should be and this is negatively impacting people's ability to carry out their job. An average of 34 minutes a day per employee are lost to searching for information, which amounts to 147 hours and 54 minutes of wasted time for every employee each working year.

Stéphane Kirchacker, VP EMEA at Sinequa says:

Our research shows workers have acclimatized to new models of working over the last year, especially when it comes to finding information when not in the office environment. Despite this, nearly half of employees still believe it's harder to find information at work than it should be, and the majority find consumer search tools such as Google easier to use and better at finding information than enterprise counterparts. This is a wakeup call for enterprise search. Office workers expect to have their complex queries answered, and to be able to easily find relevant information within their workplace environment.

Enterprise search must evolve at the pace of consumer search to meet the needs of a workforce dealing with growing quantities of data and information. More intelligent enterprise search capabilities are particularly important in the hybrid working environment, as the scattering of employees and resources makes finding information even harder. With better search, the workforce will be more productive, regardless of where people are working.

The report echoes the findings of a recent Gartner survey which found that 44 percent of users have made a wrong decision because they were unaware of information that could have helped. In addition, 43 percent of users report failing to notice important information because of having too many applications or volume of information.

Image credit: Alessandro Pintus / Shutterstock