Survey: Senior managers just don’t get tech

Published on the 08/06/2018 | Written by Newsdesk


Digital workplace_Gartner survey

Think you’re digitally dexterous? Think again. Most digital workers think their CIO is out of touch with their tech needs…

A new Gartner survey (of more than 3,000 digital workers in countries including Australia) has found that less than 50 percent of workers (both IT and non-IT) believe their CIOs are aware of digital technology problems that affect them.

“Non-IT workers aren’t likely to use the IT help desk as their first source of assistance, and are less likely to believe in the value of their IT organisation,” said Whit Andrews, vice president and analyst at Gartner.

“Only one in five non-IT workers would ask their IT department to supply best practices for employing technology.”

The survey also revealed that millennials were less likely to approach IT support teams, with about 53 percent saying that one of their first three ways to solve a problem with digital technology would be to look for an answer on the internet.

Non-IT workers were overall more likely than IT workers to express dissatisfaction with the technologies supplied for their work. IT workers express greater satisfaction with their work devices than do workers outside IT departments. Only 41 percent of non-IT workers felt very or completely satisfied with their work devices, compared to 59 percent of surveyed IT workers.

“Many IT departments will be more successful if they are able to provide what workers say they need, and provide inspiration so they can increase the workforce’s digital dexterity,” Andrews added.

Unsurprisingly, IT workers feel more confident than non-IT workers at using digital technology. (The survey found that 32 percent of IT workers characterized themselves as experts in the digital technologies they use in the workplace.) Just 7 percent of non-IT workers felt the same.

“While we expect IT people to feel more confident with digital technologies, these findings highlight how hard it is to help non-IT workers feel as digitally dexterous as IT workers do,” said Andrews.

“Organisations seeking to mature and expand their digital workplaces will find that expanding digital dexterity will accelerate this across the organisation”.

Workplace technology use_Gartner

Source: Gartner (2018)

Relative to the total workforce, a larger proportion of millennials consider the applications they use in their personal lives to be more useful than those they are given at work.

“Our survey found that 26 percent of workers between the ages of 18 and 24 use unapproved applications to collaborate with other workers, compared with just 10 percent of those aged between 55 and 74,” Mr. Andrews said.

Check out the further analysis of the report: “Survey Analysis: Digital Workers Offer a Reality Check on the Digital Workplace,”

 

Questions or comments...

  1. Tracy

    There’s a huge gap between “using” tech and properly “fixing” tech. Everything is lovely until it isn’t– and the very worst thing that most people can do is to try to wade through the sewage of the internet and then implementing something when they honestly have no idea what it really is they’re doing. THAT, is when they call IT, AFTER they’ve well and truly “stuffed it”.

    I think a lot of techs are out there who are total posers, and likewise there are a lot of techs who dramatically understate their own knowledge and experience because they, themselves, are unable to see their own value and talent. If they did, IT staff would be paid more and would not be looked down upon as the digital-age’s “used car salesmen”, as I feel we are now.

    Reply

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