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Research: Mobile working on the increase

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Rhetorik ZDNet.co.uk

Published: 25 Sep 2007 09:59 BST

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The mobile workforce
Before looking at the devices in use, we investigated the developments in mobility within the UK workforce. Clearly, the mobile workforce is the key user base of mobile devices and its requirements set demands and trends for the devices themselves.

Penetration of mobile workers
Respondents were asked about the percentage of their organisation's workforce that was considered mobile. "Mobile" was defined as "spends a significant proportion of time working away from the office or home office".

The penetration of mobile workers across the UK workforce is now significant. Compared with research undertaken by Rhetorik only a few years ago, mobility within the workforce appears to have moved apace.

In this survey, nearly a quarter of the research sample considered more than half of their staff to be mobile workers. Only 15 percent had very low mobility, with a mobile workforce of less than five percent. The spread of mobility we uncovered across all organisations was broad, as can be seen in Figure 2.

This broad distribution was apparent across most sizes of organisation, although penetration of mobility was more polarised in the small-business sector (one to 10 employees). For these small organisations, almost half believed more than 50 percent of their staff to be mobile and a quarter claimed mobility to be very low.

Figure 2: Penetration of mobile workers in the organisation

 

Q1 What percentage of your organisation's workforce is mobile (ie spends a significant proportion of time working away from the office or home office)? (single response)
Base: All respondents; Total: 273
Source: Rhetorik 2007

Trends in mobile working
Mobility clearly continues to be an upward trend among our research sample. When questioned on the proportion of mobile workers in their workforce, nearly two-thirds said that this was increasing, and most of the rest reported stability.

The smaller organisations were more likely to have reached stability, with more than half of small businesses reporting no change. Similarly, those with very low levels of current mobility were much less likely to be seeing an increase. Only a third of organisations with less than five percent mobile staff noted an increasing trend, and close to 60 percent said this had levelled.

Figure 3: Changes in the mobile workforce

Q2 Is the proportion of mobile workers in your organisation increasing or decreasing? (single response)
Base: All respondents; Total: 371
Source: Rhetorik 2007

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