With the almost sudden switch to remote office work during the initial stay-at-home mandates, COVID-19 took many businesses by surprise. Few outside the high-tech area were ready for the change-over or had protocols in place to respond quickly. Employees found themselves at home, on the Internet, and on their own. For many, it was a learning experience in how to set up their home computer to emulate the office system they were familiar with in the past (the past meaning 2019 in this case).
Will this “new normal” really be the wave of the future? Surveys and research projects abound in trying to find out if the digital universe will remain or retract when the coronavirus is finally vanquished. Recently, Nitro Software, a company focused on productivity applications, released its Future of Work report, highlighting the increasing importance of digital tools in helping knowledge workers in the world’s largest industries stay productive during the pandemic as much of the world has moved to remote work.
Insurance, banking, construction, and real estate are among the industries that have undergone the biggest shift from paper to digital workflows due to COVID-19, according to new data in the report. As a result of this shift, Nitro has seen a marked increase in demand for its digital workflow solutions, including Nitro Sign, which was recently launched as a standalone electronic signature solution.
Nitro Sign, which gives users the tools to eSign and digitally collaborate on documents, will be rolled out at no cost through 2020 to support businesses transitioning to remote work as a result of the global pandemic. With companies now contemplating a more permanent shift to employees working from anywhere in the future, Nitro Sign is intended to help organizations be more efficient and to better embrace digital transformation over the long term.
Nitro feels the recent uptick in usage has been largely driven by the changing nature of work, which they believe is here to stay. They see companies and teams quickly recognizing the benefits of the digital transformation, from cost and productivity improvements to employee satisfaction. The Future of Work report leverages data from Nitro Analytics, the business intelligence offering within the Nitro Productivity Suite, to identify four emerging trends:
- Printing has massively declined
- Migration to digital workflows has been expedited
- Electronic signing and digital collaboration have accelerated
- Work has spread outside of normal business hours
Since the start of the pandemic-driven lockdowns, the report shows a 42% decline in printing in the U.S. According to Nitro’s earlier research, prior to the transition to remote work due to COVID-19 restrictions, around half of knowledge workers signed, approved, or mailed paper documents, with 70% of these respondents also printing on paper and 60% scanning paper documents as part of their daily work routine.
With remote workers, now functioning from their homes, equipped with less of the office-based productivity tools they are used to using, including robust printers, employees are increasing their use of digital tools—and electronic signatures in particular—in order to help maintain business continuity and optimize efficiencies in this new way of working.
The Nitro research comes as banks, construction and property management, and core business groups push the government to make some of the COVID-19 emergency rule changes permanent, allowing important documents—such as mortgage and construction contracts—to be executed electronically without physical witnesses, reducing costs and processing times for both businesses and their customers.
This sentiment is bolstered by Nitro’s Future of Work research data from February to April 2020, which reported signatures were returned 43% faster across all document types, including contracts and invoices. Since the transition, electronic signature requests have spiked by 200%, and the use of digital annotation and collaboration features have increased by 61%.
The Future of Work report also indicates that while work hours have not increased overall, they have begun to fall outside of the typical 9-5. In 2019, around 10% of work fell outside of work hours, while the latest data indicates this figure is now closer to 20%.
Original Article: https://constructech.com/covid-19-and-the-future-of-work/
