If your city government is anything like ours, we went from nobody working from home to a few hundred over the course of just a week. DataKC was asked to survey this group of employees to get their feedback on what is working and what is not. We hope that this post is helpful for those who are trying to understand and support newly remote workforces.
Survey Method
We decided to email a Microsoft Form to survey employees for a few reasons.We are more familiar with Google Forms and Survey Monkey, but Microsoft forms had a few advantages that we like.
Pros of Microsoft Forms
- No cost if you already use Office 365
- Automatically record respondents email addresses
- Allows file attachments inside of forms (a really cool feature not available in other platforms and great for submitting PDF agreements to OneDrive)
- Live editing by multiple people
- Potentially easier to tie a live survey into PowerBI if needed
- Very easy to use
Cons of Microsoft Forms
- Requires users to sign-on (A good thing for security)
Survey Questions (scroll down for findings)
- What date did you start working from home or working remotely?
- Is the computer/laptop/tablet that you are primarily using for telecommuting city owned or personal?
- Are you having any issues with your computer (hardware, software, accessing your work files, etc) that need to be resolved? If “Yes”, please describe the issues.
- Do you have the right technology (hardware, computer/laptop/tablet, internet access, etc) that you need to do your job effectively from home? If “No”, please explain.
- Have you used video chat/conference with co-workers and/or your supervisor while working from home?
- If you answered “yes” to the previous question (video streaming), are you having any streaming issues with video chat/conference? If “Yes”, please describe
- Internet Speed Test — For this question, go to https://speed.measurementlab.net/ and test your internet speed. Check the “I agree to the data policy” box. Then click “Begin”.
- What is your download speed?
- What is your upload speed?
- What is your latency?
- Who is your internet service provider?
- Are there any suggestions or feedback that you’d like to add about your experience since you started telecommuting?
- What tools are you using to communicate with your team and supervisor while you are telecommuting (select all that apply)?
- How are you receiving updates about the City’s employee programs and policies and emergency operations while you are telecommuting?
- Do you have any suggestions or feedback about receiving updates from the City about employee programs and policies and emergency operations while you are actively telecommuting?
- What is the zip code of the location where you are working remotely from?
- What is your department?
Interesting Findings
- 1/3 of employees are using personal devices instead of city-owned devices to work from home. Part of this may be due to a lack of City laptops being available.
- 91% of respondents said they had the right technology to work from home. Note, the staff responding to this survey had already been approved to work from home during COVID-19, so this figure should be high.
- Exactly 1/3 of employees have used video calls since working from home. We were surprised that 2 of every 3 employees hadn’t used a video call since it is often considered a work from home best practice. We will be working to get these numbers up.
- 93% of staff reported no video chat streaming issues. We may have to watch this over time as networks become more congested as more and more people (not just staff) work from home.
- Video Chat Usage seems to vary by department. This suggests that we can target advertising and encouraging messages to those departments to get them to begin using video chat. We can also work with their department leadership to model this behavior. For example “1/3rd of your colleagues are already video chatting. Here is how you can join them.”
- There is a huge range in internet speeds among employees. Part of it could be do to the test we used (Mlab), or employees might have had family members using bandwidth while running the test. We would expect better results since 70% of staff reported having Google Fiber as their ISP. WiFI interference and network congestion may be causing a decrease in speeds.
How to Improve Working From Home for Our Employees
- About 20% of employees had issues accessing files via vpn, remote access, or through OneDrive. We will connect these employees with the IT Helpdesk.
- Some employees are having better luck with browser based versions of Outlook and other Microsoft Office products because their computer is having issues running the desktop version (older hardware).
- City Planners need larger monitors at home to be productive and a significant number of employees report missing their second monitor. Arranging times for employees to come into City Hall and pickup needed equipment may help fix this, but we would want our Health Department to chime in first.
- This would be a handy time to implement a standardized electronic signature policy.
- It’s very important to remote employees that City Leaders also become remote during COVID-19.
- Long term, we could become more sustainable by increasing the percent of laptops in our device inventory.
Closing Thoughts
It’s probably too early to tell if employees like working from home or not. However, many were thankful for the opportunity to work remotely during COVID-19. In the meantime, City Management staff are working with employees to resolve any reported technical problems.
-DataKC
