Remote employees work longer hours

In findings that rather seem to contradict the wisdom of President Trump's return to office mandate for government employees, a new report from Cloudbrink shows that 'work from anywhere' employees actually put in longer hours than their nine to five counterparts.

Analysis of usage data from thousands of users of Cloudbrink's Personal SASE service shows heavy transfer of data on Fridays and heavy usage starting at 7:00 am and continuing to 7:00 pm. The report concludes that employees are working quite a bit outside the office, but could be even more productive if technical challenges could be reduced.

"Employers shouldn't worry that remote workers are slacking off. It's simply not true. Our data shows they actually work longer hours," says Prakash Mana, CEO of Cloudbrink. "What's really impacting productivity is when users waste hours trying to get work done because of network connectivity issues caused by VPNs and other outdated security. There's no question security is a requirement, but it doesn't have to slow down productivity outside the office."

A primary cause of remote access challenges is the need to keep connections secure. Balancing security with access is a challenge for every employer with remote workers. Survey results say 70 percent of companies believe that their security negatively impacts performance and user experience. However, findings suggest professionals don’t understand the full impact or how to fix it.

Legacy and even some modern security approaches add latency which combined with packet loss can reduce a 100Mbps or 1Gbps connection to just a few Mbps. According to the report, "Adding just 0.5 percent packet loss on top of just 10 milliseconds of latency can cause throughput to plummet by 90 percent." Cloudbrink suggests that 60 percent of end users struggle with packet loss above 0.5 percent, enough to greatly exacerbate the impact of normal network latency.

Mana adds, "Unfortunately you can't solve all connectivity issues with a bigger pipe. Frustrated workers paying for high-speed connections still experience maddening upload speeds that get slower instead of faster. Packet loss is the ten-ton gorilla hiding in the shadows, and it's a more prevalent problem than most people think."

You can get the full report from the Cloudbrink site.

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