NEW STUDY SHOWS THAT WHILST 80% OF EMPLOYERS WANT STAFF BACK IN THE OFFICE, ONLY 20% ARE WILLING TO GO

A survey of over 3000 employers and workers has shown that although 83% of businesses asked wanted their employees to be based within the office for at least 3 days per working week, only 20% of employees were prepared to do it. A whopping 41% of employees questioned stated that they didn’t want to return to the office at all.

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The study was conducted by Gigabit Networks – the Midlands’ Best ISP – and targeted SME owner/operators in the Midlands, with a second study focusing on the wishes and expectations of employees. The study went on to highlight the problems both businesses and employees experience in and around Broadband and technology when working from home.

Research showed that employees were more interested in returning to the workplace to save money on their heating bills (33%) or socialise with colleagues (51%) rather than improve productivity. 90% of employees questioned stated that they considered the quality of their work to be superior when produced at home with a staggering 85% stating that they achieved more at home than within the workplace, despite problems with unreliable internet connections.

“We were shocked to see that despite employees reporting problems such as frozen video conference calls, slow connectivity or work being lost due to internet outage, the vast majority of those questioned still considered themselves more productive being based at home than in the office,” said tech entrepreneur and co-founder of Gigabit Networks, David Yates.

“It made us question how much more businesses could benefit by providing their home workers with the ultrafast speed – up to 20 times faster than standard broadband – and reliability that Full Fibre connectivity gives – it really could be a game changer for Midland’s businesses. Incredible broadband is no longer a ‘nice to have’, it’s a ‘must have’ for hybrid staff working in 2023.”

Gigabit Networks, which was recently voted ‘Midlands’ Best ISP’, was launched by tech entrepreneurs, David Yates and Dan Ilett with the intention of helping Midlands-based businesses and residents bridge the digital divide via ultrafast Full Fibre connectivity.

The ultrafast and reliable connection, which costs little more than most ordinary Broadband connections and utilises the infrastructure created by CityFibre’s £4.9 billion investment, has already been successfully rolled out into Coventry, Wolverhampton, Leicester, Derby and Nottingham – and Gigabit Networks have plans for increased penetration in these cities, as well as further expansion into the surrounding towns including Loughborough.

“Employees working from home need to have access to the best tools to do their job and ultrafast Full Fibre connectivity is that tool,” adds Gigabit co-founder Dan Illet. “Having staff working on slow and unreliable internet connections is like giving a racing driver a pushbike rather than a Porsche and still expecting them to win the race.”

Other interesting facts from the survey included 55% of those questioned feeling that the cost of commuting as a factor that would discourage them from returning to the office full-time, with 40% preferring the flexibility that working from home can provide.

Meanwhile, 54% of Employers found either an increase or no difference in productivity with staff working from home with a surprising 43% reporting remote working actually improved communication between home-working staff. 58% of employers highlighted concern about network security from potentially insecure home broadband connections.

Gigabit Network’s ultrafast service takes advantage of CityFibre’s Full Fibre connections that always use 100% fibre-optic lines directly to the building, with none of the copper wiring of traditional broadband services to slow things down. Each Full Fibre connection is exclusive to your property and capable of delivering up to 930 Megabits per second speeds both ways – more than 20x faster than normal broadband.

At present, the technology is available to 250,000 homes and businesses in the current Gigabit Networks catchment area, but this could ultimately yield over 1 million potential premises as the CityFibre infrastructure and tech roll-out continues.