Are your White Collar workers working differently?

MUMBAI, INDIA: While email is still the leading technology tool of choice, usage of text messaging, instant messaging, social networking and online productivity tools are on the rise with white-collar workers under 35, with nearly one in three reporting they use these technologies at work daily.

About 50 percent of technology "leaders" would choose text messaging or instant messaging if they could have only one technology for a month for personal use.

Also, in the next five years, white-collar workers plan to increase their time working remotely by 50 percent, resulting in average white-collar workers spending 30 percent of their time working out of the office.

These are some pointers by a survey data that shows that the younger generations in today's workforce - and the next generation coming into the workforce - have a clear

preference in the new technologies they are using to communicate with each other on a personal level. These serve as predictors of technologies that people will want to use in the workplace to help them more effectively collaborate together, and businesses that support these new technologies and workflows will likely gain competitive advantage as they enable a new level of productivity among their workers.

This survey by Directions Research, Inc. commissioned by Adobe System Incorporated points toward an evolution in office workplace culture, including the changing ways white-collar workers are interacting and coordinating their tasks, and how business will be conducted in the social media-rich environment of the 21st century.

According to Randy Brooks, president and founder, Directions Research , "E-mail was a major disruptor to the way people worked a generation ago, moving the way people communicated and collaborated with each other into the digital realm. With new technologies providing an even more fluid and immediate means for communicating and expressing ideas, we are poised to enter into the new era of work, where the latest communications technologies and social networking platforms will be essential to the success of business."