Half of British workers want wearable devices added to their employee package

The findings form part of Ricoh’s new report in partnership with polling company Censuswide into digital workplace trends. The Digital Dexterity: Denied report includes detailed polling of over 2,000 UK office workers and provides fresh insights into the technology challenges facing companies and their employees.

The report identifies digital skills training as a key differentiator for employees seeking a new job. Over a third of UK office workers say they would move jobs to a company which offered better digital skills in the workplace. Likewise a modest 18 per cent of respondents rated their skills as ‘excellent’ whilst 51 per cent said ‘good’ and 30 per cent considered themselves ‘average.’

Only 15 per cent of UK office workers said they considered the current use of tech by their company as excellent.

Chas Moloney, director, Ricoh UK comments: “Mastering digital dexterity is critical for career building and workers are looking to employers to do the heavy lifting and ensure opportunities for skills training are in place.

The failed ‘one size fits all’ working culture of the past must be scrapped in favour of tech-enabled workstyles that allow individuals to collaborate and reach their full potential.”

The research also found that social media and collaboration tools are set to play a more critical role in future working environments.

44 per cent of UK office workers believe that social media and workplace collaboration technologies will help improve employee working relationships in the office. Nearly half of UK office workers said that Facebook was banned in their workplace. This was closely followed by Twitter at 34 per cent and Instagram at 31 per cent.