More and more Canadians are spending at least some time working away from the office, and cloud-based apps are helping them stay productive.
Workspace provider Regus surveyed 44,000 senior business people across more than 100 countries for its study on the web apps used by remote workers, including more than 2500 Canadians. With more than 84 per cent of workers (85 per cent in Canada) having used at least one tool to help enable remote working in the past month, use of these tools has been increasing dramatically.
Working remotely used to be filled with headaches – did I bring those files I need, can I access my work email – but Regus found the proliferation of efficient and secure document sharing services is helping to address many of the traditional pain points. It’s why online file sharing apps were among the more popular apps – Dropbox was the choice of 60 per cent of Canadian respondents, followed by Google Drive at 41 per cent and TeamViewer at 17 per cent.
On the communication front – keeping in touch with colleagues being another traditional remote worker challenge – instant messaging and voice tools are helping to keep remote workers in the loop. In this category, Skype was the most popular app with 61 per cent of Canadian respondents having used it within the last month, followed by Facebook Messenger at 44 per cent and Viber at 11 per cent. Only 16 per cent said they hadn’t used an instant messaging tool within the last month.
“The growth in instant messaging apps and document-sharing services are playing an enormous role in helping more people to work flexibly, by enabling more reliable and secure ways of communicating with colleagues and sharing files, from wherever people may be working,” said Wayne Berger, vice-president of Regus Canada, in a statement. “This means they can be fully operative even when they are not in the office and in fact, they can save time spent travelling into the office or to and from meetings by working closer to home and so boost productivity.”