As part of our #pandemicEX project, Forrester surveyed over 1,800 working adults across Europe and Asia Pacific, including 271 in Singapore, to find out how they feel their firms are responding to the coronavirus.

Here are some key highlights:

  • Only half of companies have the confidence of Singaporean employees. 57% percent of Singaporean workers agree that their company or organization “has a plan for how [they’ll] manage” the risk associated with Covid-19. Unsurprisingly, managers and executives are slightly more likely to believe their company has a plan: 61% of them agree. But let’s be honest, that number is still low. If employees at manager-level and above don’t think there’s a plan, it’s because there likely isn’t one, or at least not one worth implementing.
  • Remote work is not business as usual for most. 54% of Singapore workers said that their workplaces had asked “some workers to work from home more than usual.” At 26% and 35% respectively, non-managers and managers alike have worked from home even before the COVID-19 situation. Which means that a majority of workers will need support and guidance to shift to this new ways of working.
  • Companies’ technology capabilities are stretched. 54% agree that their “company has the technology resources” needed to support working from home. This is low considering that companies, at the time of the survey, had more than two months to prepare for this situation. As remote work becomes the new normal for many employees, firms must deliver the required hardware and software capabilities to support their employees’ remote ways of working and enable them to remain productive at home.
  • Technology is not enough to make remote working work. 49% of workers say that they have the flexibility in their work schedule and related obligations to “take care of family members should I need to.” Being productive while working from home is one thing, but simultaneously taking care of a symptomatic family member will present a challenge for nearly half of all workers who don’t believe they have the flexibility needed. Unsurprisingly, at 43%, rank-and-file individual contributors are the least likely to say that they have that option.