While Sinequa’s research reveals that employees in both the UK and US face challenges when searching for information at work, US employees report fewer problems than UK workers on average. The difference between the countries may partly be accounted for by the differing emphasis on tools designed to help with search needs. Two times more US respondents (14%) than UK respondents (7%) said their organization had implemented an intelligent enterprise search tool to help adapt to new working environments.
Despite differences in the implementation of intelligent search tools, both US and UK workers report similar adoption of other tools to adapt to new working practices. 68% of US workers and 67% of UK workers use remote collaboration tools such as Slack and Teams. Meanwhile, 72% of US workers and 73% of UK workers have had more regular virtual meetings to keep the team updated on activities and workload since the pandemic altered working patterns.
Stéphane Kirchacker, VP EMEA at Sinequa said: “While finding information in the work environment is clearly a challenge faced by office workers regardless of their location, it’s interesting to note that UK workers report more problems on average than their US counterparts. All organizations stand to gain from improving access to information and improving their search capabilities. It’s vital that these tools are considered as part of the digital workplace to help boost the productivity and efficiency of workers, and prevent lost or wasted time searching unnecessarily across multiple platforms. With the right tools in place, workers can be effective regardless of whether they are working at home or in the office.”
As companies continue to adapt to the new working world, the most typical model moving forwards in both the US and the UK remains a hybrid model, with a mix of working from home and working in the office. However, US employees report a broader spread across other models of working. More US employees (30%) than UK employees (23%) are already back in the office full time. At the same time, there are more US employees (16%) than UK employees (6%) undertaking a slow return to the office, with a couple of days a week until they build up to a full return.
