Are Inefficient Document Productivity Tools Increasing Remote Workers’ Stress Levels?

Research from Nitro Software underscores how a lack of appropriate document productivity and management tools has inflicted work-related stress on a vast majority of remote workers and why organizations must act quickly to alleviate employees’ concerns.

San Francisco, California-based document productivity solutions provider Nitro Software Inc. revealed that a vast majority of remote workers experience high levels of stress even though their productivity levels are more or less the same compared to 2019.

The COVID-19 pandemic triggered a significant shift for knowledge workers, with organizations worldwide adopting digitally-enabled technologies to improve operational efficiencies. But it also exposed the obvious technology needs, which became apparent very quickly.

Nitro Software’s The Future of Work – Part 2 report identifies trends in the document behavior of knowledge workers and how the tectonic shift enforced by the pandemic directly or indirectly impacted their productivity levels and job satisfaction.

“Not surprisingly, the current pandemic has seen stress levels elevate across the board. While many people are having to contend with financial worries and concerns over job security, factors such as trying to stay healthy, attempting to care for children and others while juggling work deliverables, and maintaining some form of social contact with friends and family can account for much of the day-to-day anxiety triggers,” said Gina O’ReillyOpens a new window , COO of Nitro Software.

“Each of these factors, in turn, makes working from home during this time that much more stressful. For that reason, even the slightest disruption to completing a task — slow internet connection, lack of access to tools to perform simple tasks like opening a PDF or signing a document — can cause unnecessary frustration and more stress.”

According to the report, 64% of remote workers are satisfied with their jobs, which is 4% higher than 2019 figures. 73% also prefer working from home after the pandemic ends, indicating that most of them have adjusted to the new working pattern without much difficulty. 67% also said that work from home (WFH) is very or extremely important when considering future job opportunities.

So Why Are 90% of Remote Workers Suffering From Stress?

According to Nitro Software, even though pandemic-induced lockdowns did not impact employee productivity, companies need to analyze the adequacy of document productivity tools provided to employees. In a survey commissioned by Nitro, 83% of remote workers said they did not see any improvements in document management and handling by their company, with only 39% saying their workflows are up-to-date. Additionally, the survey noted a 10% drop in the number of employees who said document workflows are efficient (61% in 2020 vs. 71% in 2019).

One can see why this can be a problem when paperless documentation is quickly becoming the standard for digital workflows. Workers are relying on digital actions and workflows more frequently since they shifted to remote work. Nitro’s survey found that 63% of employees work with more than six documents a day, and 69% work with PDFs at least once a day.

The following graph shows how digital workflows have evolved over the past year:

See Also: Silicon Valley VC Firm Says the Deskless Workforce Needs Better Technology

Challenges to Digital Transformation

As per the report, there are several reasons why organizations are unable to provide appropriate document productivity and management tools to employees working in remote locations. These are:

• IT staff are too busy (42%)
• Limited budget available (41%): This corroborates with the findings of Silicon Valley-based venture capital firm Emergence Capital which reported budget constraints as the key reason why 47% of its respondents believe appropriate tools weren’t provided to employees
• Lack of training or support for users (38%)
• Management is unaware of challenges (34%)
• No way for me to provide any input to decision makers (24%)

How Can Organizations Alleviate Their Employees’ Stress Levels?

The survey found that better document productivity and management tools can make the handling of daily tasks easier for employees (51%), and save them a lot of time in the process (55%). Remote Workers also expect improvements in other areas that can help them deal with job-related stress. These areas are:

• Better training on available tools and technologies
• More automated processes and workflows
• Standardizing processes
• Better or more tools to enable remote work
• Better integrations between available tools
• Digitization of manual or paper-based processes

“Typical insurance document workflows include review of policies for new language, incorrect details, missing items, and more. Typically, our teams would print all these documents at the office and manually mark up any comments with a pen. When our workforce started working remotely because of the COVID-19 pandemic, many had to adjust to not having printers at home,” explained a Business Application Support Manager at one of the top 10 US-based insurance broker and consulting firms.

“With quick training on features like PDF annotation and adding signatures, they were able to transform their workflows to be less reliant on paper. This saved significant time for our users, and helped our team maintain high service levels during a very challenging time,” they added.

Nitro Software’s findings are based on the responses of 1,632 full and part-time knowledge workers from several industries involved in multiple job roles.

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