Poor Broadband Holding Back Homeworkers

LONDON — The working-from-home trend is increasing at a phenomenal rate. According to the Office of National Statistics 4.2 million people in the UK spend at least half of their week working from home and millions more occasionally work from home. However, workers’ productivity is being held back by poor home broadband, according to a survey of 3,000 Brits from Hyperoptic, a UK FTTP broadband provider, commissioned the research to get an insight into how connectivity is affecting homeworkers.

The results highlighted that, on average, homeworkers work longer hours than their office-based counterparts. Ninety percent of respondents work longer hours at home due to the time saved from the commute and 63 percent claim they work over an hour extra each day, equating to three days more over the course of a month for full-time homeworkers.

Slower Home Broadband Negatively Impacts Productivity
Despite investing this extra time, homeworkers are being held back by poor broadband. Nearly three quarters (72 percent) of workers confess that they actually feel more productive in the office, largely due to poor connectivity at home. Ninety percent of respondents admit that their home broadband is slower than their office business broadband, which has a negative impact on productivity, due to dropped video calls, intermittent VPN access and time wasted spent uploading and downloading files. The broadband bugbear is so pronounced that the respondents claim they would choose to work an extra day per week at home, if their broadband was fit for task.

“We see fast, reliable home broadband as vital for effective homeworking," said Steve Holford, VP product marketing, Hyperoptic. "As businesses move to data-driven cloud-based models, remote and homeworking becomes an option for an increasing amount of staff – giving them a better work/life balance, without necessarily impacting overall business efficiency.

“With Brits choosing to work away from the office in their droves, it’s imperative that they have the tools to be effective. Poor home broadband means wasted time — slower responses, lags in resolving customer issues and disrupted remote meetings. As we look to the future, home broadband will no doubt start to become an issue for recruitment and HR professionals alike."