British SMBs think they’ve been more productive during lockdown

New research from Vodafone reinforces recent findings that remote and home workers are, in fact, more productive, compared to their peers in the office.

Vodafone recently polled 1,003 small business employees about their thoughts and experiences with remote and home working, and found that 40 percent of them put in extra 642 hours, or 26 days, since the UK lockdown began in March.

The bulk of these new hours comes from the lack of commuting – the time employees would usually spend travelling to and from the office is now being spent on actual work. 

Furthermore, 61 percent said they didn’t mind picking up a task at any time of the day, resulting in more productivity, efficiency and more hours. A quarter of home workers admitted to spending at least one day at their local coffee shop or café, working.

Before Covid-19 forced everyone indoors, businesses were taking their time with digital transformation and remote / flexible working options. They mostly feared a lack of trust, productivity, poor communication and cybersecurity issues.

While most of these issues still persist, despite the fact that businesses were basically forced into remote working, their effects (with the exception of cybersecurity) have mostly been less impactful than expected.

Cybersecurity still remains a huge problem, mostly because many employees never had any training on how to stay safe while working online.

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