Brit Firms Terrified Of Eroding Competitiveness

A new report entitled “Beyond Digital” from the digital experience consulting firm Infomentum offers new insight into how UK employees feel in regard to new technologies affecting their workplaces.

According to the report, 91 per cent of UK employees believe that by the year 2020, their businesses will no longer be competitive as a result of new technologies.

The research behind the report was collected using feedback from over 1,000 office workers. The employees believe that not only will new technologies affect the outlook of their jobs in the next four years, but also that their companies will be forced to adopt new emerging technologies to keep up with their competition. 50 per cent of the employees surveyed for the report believe that their companies will adopt new technologies regardless of their strategic value and will do so merely because others are doing so.

Not only will businesses have to prepare themselves for the changes that are almost likely to come, the UK workforce will have to do so as well. As a growing number of manual jobs are replaced by automation, 61 per cent of the office employees surveyed believe that their own professions will increasingly become automated as well.

Infomentum also believes that flexible working technologies will play a large role in the UK’s future. Currently only one third of the companies in the UK allow their employees to work from home. 40 per cent of those surveyed were interested in the idea of being able to work outside of their offices and see such an opportunity as a way in which businesses could remain competitive and be able to retain their current employees.

As it stands now, there is a gender inequality when it comes to being able to work from home. Today male employees are 12 per cent more likely to be allowed to work from home whereas female employees are only 8 per cent more likely to be acquire flexible working hours.

Tremendous change as a result of new technologies is certainly coming thanks to the technological advances that have occurred in recent years. Employees and employers share a responsibility in adequately preparing for that change if they wish to remain competitive in 2020.

Image source: Shutterstock/alphaspirit

Author: Anthony Spadafora
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