India moving towards a highly mobile workforce: Study

The traditional office, where people sit at their dedicated desks working a 9-5 routine, is rapidly giving way to a highly mobile workplace of the future.

Catching up with the global trends, India is fast moving towards adopting a mobile workstyle; India ranks highest in terms of organisational technical capability to support mobile workstyles amongst other countries.

According to the Citrix- Workplace of the Future report a whopping 83 per cent Indian organisations can technically support mobile workstyles, as compared to the global average of 57 per cent.

The report further highlights that Indian knowledge workers (professionals involved in data/knowledge oriented jobs) amongst surveyed Indian organisations use more than eight computing devices on an average.

Around 46 per cent of surveyed Indian organisations currently provide mobile workstyles for employees and are continuing to expand this scenario. So, what are the key triggers behind organisations opting for a mobile workforce startegy?

The report says that the main drivers in India are requests from employees, introduction of cost-cutting measures, the appointment of a new senior executive team and in response to a security breach or risk evaluation.

Globally too, organisations are adopting a similar strategy primarily because they stand to benefit from a more flexible, agile workforce, lower employee-related and real estate costs and the ability to attract and retain top talent.

Organisations across the globe anticipate that a third of their people will no longer access corporate applications from the local office, organisations will have almost a fifth less workspace by the end of 2020, provide just two-thirds of a desk for each office employee, and completely redesign their workplace.

Th research shows that a third of office workers will no longer be based at a traditional office; instead they will be operating from home, the field, as well as from hotels, airports and trains. Individuals will access corporate applications, data and services from an average of six different computing devices a day. The report further claims that driven by employee demand, 91 per cent of organisations worldwide are adopting mobile workstyles and enabling people to work from anywhere.