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Coronavirus pandemic

Every sixth company in Russia can keep remote working after pandemic — poll

Every fifth company is confident that in the future some meetings and events will be held online, according to the survey

© Piotr Kovalev/TASS

MOSCOW, August 18. /TASS/. About 17% of Russian companies can fully or partially maintain remote working mode after the pandemic, according to a survey the Russian Association for Electronic Communications (RAEC) jointly conducted with the Higher School of Economics and Microsoft and made available to TASS.

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The survey reveals that only 2% of companies find it possible to fully switch to remote work after the pandemic. Meanwhile every sixth company noted that part of their employees can continue to work "from home."

During the pandemic, more than half of Russian companies fully or partially switched to remote work. Before spring 2020, less than 1% of them worked remotely. Another 8% of enterprises and companies did not switch to remote work, but were forced to completely change their business processes.

Representatives of Russian enterprises and companies expect that the events of the spring of 2020 will have a long-term impact on business.

"81% of respondents are confident that the events of the spring of 2020 will have an impact on business processes and management of companies in the future," experts say.

The survey respondents expect most significant changes in their companies to occur in external communications. For example, every fifth company is confident that in the future some meetings and events will be held online.

"The new conditions require that businesses should adapt new tools. According to the survey, in the spring of 2020, 25% of Russian enterprises and companies began using tools for video conferencing, 20% began to use tools for online communications (instant messengers, corporate chats) and 15% have implemented tools for remote monitoring of equipment," RAEC analysts note.

In the future, companies expect high demand for such technologies as business process automation systems (29%), cloud technologies (25%) and voice technologies (16%). Digital tools include e-mail (53%), tools for online communication (44%) and video conferencing (36%) and electronic document management systems (29%).

The survey was conducted from May 25 to June 3, 2020 among employees of Russian enterprises and companies representing various sectors of the economy (IT, retail, manufacturing, education, finance, banking, insurance, etc.) aged from 20 to 60, in leadership positions, as well as qualified specialists without leadership functions. In total 460 questionnaires were filled.

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