With more than 80% of companies planning to have their staff work remotely at least part-time for the foreseeable future, working from home is still one of the biggest trends impacting the IoT (Internet of Things) and AI (artificial intelligence) space this year. From my personal experience, I can tell you there are some upsides to working from home—and there are some downsides.
A big shortcoming is this: People in both the U.S. and U.K. have settled into a habit of working more hours a day. That is people in the U.S. are working three hours more a day, while people in the U.K. are working two hours more a day, according to new data from NordVPN Teams.
I can relate to some of these numbers. We see that the U.S. increased their average work week by almost 40%, adding an extra 15 hours, which equates to more than one extra work week per month. This is directly correlated to mandated remote work during the COVID-19 pandemic. We see—even four months later—U.S. employees are still spending three hours longer on business VPNs (virtual private networks) per day.
Another interesting piece of data is that the U.K. seems to start work an hour later than before the quarantine, while both the U.S. and the U.K. tend to work late in the day as well.
With all of this new found work, the usage of business VPNs rose in April, which coincided with a widely-reported spike in the usage of home networks and devices, many of which might lack the protection necessary for secure remote work.
According to Juta Gurinaviciute, chief technology officer, NordVPN Teams, cloud-based VPNs are becoming extremely popular due to their simple ‘plug & play’ set-up. New clients can be set up quickly, and, more importantly, remotely. For example, NordVPN Teams sets up 200 users per hour on average.
At the same time, we are seeing a spike in spending on cloud security—and rightfully so. Gartner also predicts this will increase by 33% this year alone, partly due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The ongoing shift to a cloud-based delivery model makes the security market somewhat more resilient, with an average penetration of 12% of overall security deployments cloud-based in 2019. Research also shows that cloud-based delivery models have reached well above 50% of the deployments in markets such as secure email and web gateways.
Here’s a telling twist. France, Canada, and Spain were working a two-hour increase, but now are back to their pre-quarantine working regime. This could be partly due to the fact that employees are at least partly back to the offices in most European countries. Will the same fate come to the U.S.? When we get back into our office buildings will we return to our traditional 9-5 hours? Or are we going to stay in an always-on, remote work world?
If it is the latter, we need to be asking ourselves this key question: Are we burning our people out? More importantly, how can you tell if the long hours are creating unrelenting stress that’s too much stress or just simply manageable stress?
I see an opportunity for other technologies to step up and help as well. AI technology can help in developing training. We know RevTwo can turn employees and customers into superheros by leveraging a platform that provides first generation predictive AI and IoT data. RevTwo Navigator combines self-learning AI with user interactions and IoT data to reduce support and service troubleshooting time for technical issues. With the technology, users are guided through a series of steps that gather observations and then the platform recommends actions to efficiently diagnose and repair equipment. With each interaction, the system gets smarter.
As I have been saying all along, we have always had a need for AI in businesses, but the pandemic has just sped these things up. We need to improve our labor productivity, or we just might be looking at a long-term 40% increase to our average work week. And I can easily tell you what’s going to happen to your team: a long, slow burn, and that leads to burnout.
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