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NEW DELHI: The growing trend towards working from home was likely to breed a more productive and liberated international workforce, according to a worldwide survey of 941 remote and mobile workers.
The survey, conducted by SonicWALL Inc., a provider of integrated network security, and Insight Express, indicated that 76 percent of the employees surveyed believed working remotely enhanced productivity.
Sixty-one percent were also convinced that their managers agreed with them.
Security came low on the list of priorities. However, 88 percent of the respondents admitted to storing passwords in easily accessible locations. Only 12 percent employed encrypted files to store and manage their login data.
Fifty-six percent of those surveyed relied on their memories to keep track of their network passwords, while others used the same passwords for all devices, stored the information on cell phones, or stuck notes with the login information onto their computer.
All respondents were relaxed about their personal habits when working remotely. While about 39 percent of respondents of both sexes wore sweats on while working from home, 12 percent of males and seven percent of females said they wore nothing at all.
In matters of cleanliness, the difference between the sexes was more pointed: Forty-four percent of women surveyed said they showered on work-at-home days, as opposed to men, who were slightly more likely to shave (33%) than wash (30%).
Eighteen percent of men regularly took break off to do household tasks, while over 38 percent of women found their attention claimed by chores.
Respondents also said they took the opportunity to eat and drink outside standard times (about 35%); listen to music (45%) or watch TV (28%); and 21% of all respondents admitted to sneaking in an afternoon nap.
A small percentage of those surveyed (9%) admitted to feelings of guilt about being away from the office. Taking a longer lunch than at the workplace was also relatively rare (12%).
This easy-going approach kept tempers on an even keel, the survey said. More than 80 percent of surveyed workers had never lost their temper with support staff trying to help them fix a problem.
Only 40 percent of the respondents experienced problems when accessing their corporate networks remotely, although fewer than 50 percent accessed any applications other than Web mail when working outside the office.
More than half of the respondents accessed the corporate network from home on a daily basis, with 86 percent logging in remotely several times a week.
Respondents said that the chief attraction of working remotely was the ability to maintain a flexible schedule. Only 22 percent of workers used cell phones or PDAs to work from home, but respondents said they expected this type of usage to grow in the coming year.
“We are experiencing a sharp rise in demand for simple, secure remote access to networks of all sizes,” said Steve Franzese, vice president of marketing at SonicWALL.
“The growing popularity of remote and mobile working means that the perimeter of the network has become indistinct, and is therefore more difficult to protect,” he added.
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