A survey of small business owner/managers and senior executives for O2 has revealed that the number who let their employees telework has remained static and less of them appear to be accessing email when out of the office.
The findings reveal occasionally surprising disparities between the perceived trend towards mobility and the reality on the ground for some small businesses.
While the numbers of owner/managers and senior executives teleworking has increased from 25% in 2004 to 30% in 2005 – and more than one in ten spend four days a month working from home – the number with employees doing so has dropped slightly from 14% to 12%.
Of the three-quarters who do not have teleworking employees, the vast majority (74%) argue this is because ‘they don’t need to’, while others (17%) say ‘it doesn’t suit the job’.
The findings for teleworking revealed more than a third of owner/managers did so to boost productivity, over a quarter cited convenience as their main reason, 14 per cent thought it provided a better work life balance and 11 per cent used it to avoid traffic gridlock.
The numbers for email access are also intriguing. They reveal 57 per cent access email out of the office, down from 64 per cent in 2004. The majority use dial up from home or laptops to access email and one in five use an Internet cafe. Despite the hype, the numbers using PDAs/Blackberry devices fell slightly from 10 per cent to eight per cent and none of those who took part in the survey used mobile phones to access their email.
Although none seemed to use mobile phones for e-mail, 43% of those surveyed said they would like to access e-mail via their mobiles. Other uses were news, traffic information, picture messaging, sports news and weather.
Broadband adoption improved on 2004 with 42% having broadband access from the office (compared to 34% the previous year) and one third had access from home (up from a quarter in 2004). The research showed 50% of those who enquired about broadband found it was not available for their office in their area.
O2 Ireland marketing director Paul Farrell said: “Broadband availability remains a big issue and our survey suggests the further you go from Dublin the worse it gets which is a barrier to decentralisation policies and overall competitiveness.”
Another barrier might be disinterest. The survey found that more than 50 per cent of those who did not have broadband did not bother to enquire about availability.
The survey of small and medium sized businesses, now in its third year, is conducted annually by TNS MRBI.
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