80% of workers satisfied with COVID-19 crisis response at their companies

• Survey of 1,000 employees in Austria
• What people want from a "workplace of the future" after Corona

Vienna, September 4, 2020 - Four out of five employees in Austria give their own company a good report card for its response to the Corona crisis. fifty-six percent report newly created home office options. These are the results of the study "Workplace of the future in the digital world" by the digital group Kapsch Group. For this, a market research institute surveyed a representative population of 1,000 employees in Austria.

"In our company, the switch to the home office after the lockdown worked very well," says Daniel Rutter, Executive Vice President Human Resources Kapsch Group. "As a digital group, we have been relying on collaboration solutions in our portfolio for quite some time. That's why our employees were already well equipped technologically before COVID-19. Flexible working hours have also been standard practice at our company for quite some time - an important reason why our productivity has not suffered in crisis mode."

Workplace of the future: younger people think a little differently.

As the survey shows, there are some differences in the wishes for the workplace of the future in the various age groups. While younger employees (20-40 year-olds) prefer to work with a few colleagues in the same room (shared office), older employees (41-60 year-olds) prefer a single office. Open-plan offices are not popular in either age group. For around a quarter of younger employees, the use of modern collaboration tools such as MS Teams is very important; for older employees, this is the case for just 15 percent. Finally, both groups show a comparably positive attitude when it comes to the use of mobile devices or basically being able to work regardless of location.

Innovation needs personal exchange.

Location-independent working had already gained importance at K-Businesscom before the pandemic, partly due to international collaboration on projects. "A digitally networked workplace is the right way to go, especially in view of the wishes of the younger generation," says Rutter. "However, successful teamwork requires a well-balanced approach. As our daily experience shows, innovations often emerge from chance conversations with colleagues from other areas of the company. These informal conversations, for example in the coffee kitchen, and other analog rituals must be preserved even in a digital working world."

Employees in Austria give companies good marks for Corona crisis response.

About the survey.

For the survey "Workplace of the future in the digital world", a market research institute conducted a representative survey of a total of 1,000 employees in Austria on behalf of the digital group Kapsch Group. The results of the field study are analyzed separately by gender (50% women, 50% men) and age groups (20-40 year olds and 41-60 year olds). The survey was also conducted in Germany (N=1,000) and in the USA (N=1,000).

Kapsch Group is a globally active technology group headquartered in Vienna. The company's areas of expertise - digitalization and mobility - are addressed by two business units that, as end-to-end providers, have solutions along the entire value chain. K-Businesscom is the ideal partner for digital transformation. As an expert in traffic management, K-Businesscom TrafficCom offers intelligent solutions for congestion charging, smart urban mobility, traffic safety, and connected vehicles.

In all areas, K-Businesscom pursues the goal of global quality and innovation leadership and invests around ten percent of total revenue in research and development every year. The Group's own R&D centers work consistently to bring new technologies to market maturity. Long-standing collaborations with scientific institutions and strategic acquisitions provide additional know-how.