Cisco survey finds business at a loss for remote access during loss

Most unprepared to set up workers remotely in case of workforce disruption

Companies are unprepared to enable most of their employees to telecommute during workforce disruptions such as transit failures or natural disasters, Cisco found in a recent nationwide survey on "Securing the Mobile Workforce." These organizations risk disrupting their business operations in the event of a mass telecommute situation for an indefinite period of time, Cisco found in its survey.

What they need to do, naturally, is buy a networking infrastructure that supports remote work by a high percentage of employees, Cisco found. A shocking development indeed...  

The survey was commissioned by Cisco and conducted by InsightExpress. It queried 502 IT officials from U.S. businesses of all sizes and vertical markets: health care, retail, finance, government and education sectors.

More than half of the IT executives surveyed said that less than half their employees were currently set up to work remotely; 21% said that they have no employees enabled to work remotely. Thirty eight percent said that business requirements did not necessitate a remote work infrastructure.

Sensing an opportunity, Cisco pressed on with its survey. It found that 22% of the respondents feel that their current remote access set up positions their companies for disaster preparedness and business continuity.  Meanwhile, 15% listed "pandemic or other disaster preparedness" as a top business driver for providing remote access to employees, and only 5% listed it as the primary business driver.

That means 85% see no business driver for remote access. Oops, sorry: 71% of the survey respondents said that employee productivity is a business driver for providing remote access; and 55% said that enabling "efficient and competitive business operations" was a driver.

Indeed, of those who had adopted mobility and remote access technology, 62% found that it increased employee productivity, with 57% noting an increase in employee satisfaction and 42% seeing a reduction in overhead costs. Still, Cisco says the survey results indicate that the majority of companies are not considering the importance of remote access for potential business interruptions.

Try powering down the building -- then they might think about it. It's hard to believe that in all of the "employee productivity/satisfaction/efficient operation" cheerleading no one thought, 'Hey, this stuff might come in handy during an earthquake'?

Maybe they just got tired of doing the survey and didn't think about their answers.

And according to Cisco, the cost to implement remote access across an entire workforce, in most cases, is a fraction of what the loss of business would be if employees could not work remotely during a crisis. There's your discount.

Cisco says the survey results varied by industry, with businesses in the health care and finance being better prepared for a disaster situation than those in the retail, education and government.

Government unprepared for a disaster? There's a finding we can all agree with.

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• Cisco
• disaster recovery
• remote access
• telework