As cloud apps become more commonplace, they may also make employees happier if they are able to use them for work, according to a new study.
Commissioned by Toronto, Canada-based Softchoice Cloud from the market research Blackstone Group, the study found that 74 percent of cloud app users are happy at work while 19 percent are not. Of the employees Blackstone polled, they found that 35 percent of employees who said they were excited to go to work used six or more cloud apps.
Approximately 53 percent of healthcare employees in the U.S. and Canada use between one and five or more cloud-based apps for work. About half of healthcare employers in the two countries have a cloud app policy. However, Softchoice vice president of information technology Francis Li said every employer should have a cloud app policy, especially as more millennials enter the workforce. However, the trend of wanting to use not confined to millennials, he said.
"I get a sense that our employees want to be productive on their terms," Mr. Li said. "You might call it a millennial effect, I don't know, but I've seen it from groups that you wouldn't consider millennials."
Mr. Li, who was in marketing before he became the vice president of information technology in January 2013, said employees are going to use cloud apps for their personal lives anyway, and providing them more flexibility in how they choose to work could increase productivity and happiness at work. Employees who were allowed to choose the apps they used at work were twice as likely to be happy at work as those who were not, the study found.
While the employee engagement portion of the study is significant, Mr. Li said he saw the results as a way to see what gaps in the workflow he could correct. If employees are using a particular app, such as an online file-sharing application or a scheduling app, companies should work to establish a standard, he said.
"I almost don't even discern between business applications and personal applications," Mr. Li said. "I think that line blurs a little bit. I think if you're an IT leader and you don't embrace [cloud app use], the talent pool that you want to draw from is going to get smaller."