More SA employees expected to work from home full-time

 ·28 Jul 2017

Dimension Data has released its latest digital workplace report, revealing how technology is changing South Africa’s business landscape.

The global report is based on a survey of 850 business and IT leaders driving technology and organisational changes in their companies. The goal was to determine how organisations are evolving from a traditional office environment to a digital workplace.

Survey participants work at organisations with at least 1,000 employees, representing seven industries.

In South Africa, Dimension Data spoke to 73 executives of companies with at least 1,000 employees.

The report found that 42% of organisations in South Africa have employees working from home full-time today, with 67% saying they will have employees working from home full-time within the next two years.

On a global scale, this figure is 10% lower.

In comparison, 35% have employees in South Africa working from home part-time today, with 79% saying they will have employees working from home part of the time two years from now.

Unsurprisingly, the surveyed companies found that the biggest barrier to this change was getting other parts of the business to buy into such an initiative.

Three quarters (67%) of South African organisations identify this as being the most common form of resistance, 14 percentage points higher than those reported globally.

Why there’s such a big push

According to Dimension Data, South African organisations are very clear on the primary objective associated with a digital workplace strategy – with 49% stating that gaining a competitive advantage was the most important goal.

While this was also a priority globally, improving business processes and growing revenues was equally important for global organisations.

For South African organisations, the CEO is the most influential driver of change with respect to new digital workplaces, with 33% of businesses surveyed highlighting this.

A quarter of South African organisations advised that the CFO is a key driver of change, considerably more than the 16% of global companies that identified that position as being the most influential champion of change.

The IT director and the CIO also have a high degree of influence in South African organisations.

Globally, the IT director and CEO have influence that is equal with that of the CIO.

Interestingly, despite a clear desire to push towards digitisation, Dimension Data noted that many South African organisations are yet to define a comprehensive digital workplace strategy.

It noted that 62% of South African organisations haven’t developed a formal and comprehensive strategy around how they deploy or plan to benefit from digital workplace technology.


Read: Cyber crime is the fourth most reported economic crime in SA – Cisco

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