A new report, ‘The State of IT – The Employee Verdict’, reveals that more than half (55%) of financial services workers in the UK lose at least an hour a month to IT problems, with an average 1 hour 23 minutes lost. Although 95% of financial services workers stated they had IT issues at work, less than two thirds (62%) actually reached out to IT support or service desks to solve them.

The research highlights that whilst many organisations are setting out to create digital workplaces, there is a real disconnect between what they aim to deliver and the reality of the employee experience. Despite the focus on digital transformation across all sectors, more than a third (35%) of UK financial services workers do not report a good IT experience.

Joe Hemming, executive officer, Capita IT & Networks, said: “These findings really push workplace IT to the top of the agenda. Just imagine how much more productive UK enterprises could be if they could close this £4 billion black hole. As it stands, they are not even aware that it exists. Organisations cannot expect their workforce to be productive without providing them with the IT experience they need to do their job effectively.

“As digitalisation continues to impact our home and work lives, and as employees become increasingly IT literate, introducing and promoting the use of self-service tools will make it possible to resolve issues as quickly and accurately as possible.”

Organisations should foster the increasing tech skills of users and improve the quality of IT support offered, by driving the uptake of self-service tools wherever possible. Today AI and RPA is enabling a higher level of self-service than ever before and organisations appear to realise the benefits of self-service tools, with more than half (58%) of financial services workers saying their employer has implemented them. However, there is work to be done on adoption as the report found that only 38% of workers have actually used self-service.

Understanding the user experience

The research shows that financial services organisations must do more to understand their employees’ experience of IT in order to begin addressing it. In fact, only just over a third (39%) of UK financial services workers said they have been asked for their feedback on the IT experience; of those who hadbeen asked, only 44% said that this happens at least once a quarter. The case for increasing the amount and frequency of feedback on the IT user experience is clear: as well as boosting productivity, it’s essential to retention – with more than three quarters (78%) of workers stating that technology is a factor in people’s career choices.

It’s clear that a significant number of employees are not being given a good IT experience at work,” added Joe Hemming. “Organisations must look carefully at how they manage and measure the delivery of IT services to users in order to bring these in line with the expectations of an increasingly digitally aware and entitled workforce.  With IT playing an ever increasing role in people’s career choices it will be those organisations that can provide a truly digital workspace experience which stand to reap the rewards.”

This research was carried out by Opinium in March 2019, surveying the opinions of 2,000 UK ‘Knowledge Workers’, which is defined as being those who use a computer to access data and applications. 210 of these worked in the financial services sector.