"The European world of work” by IPSOS for Steelcase International
How do Europeans store at work?
Schiltigheim, France, 26th November 2007 - Steelcase International, the EMEA division of Steelcase Inc., the global leader in the office furniture industry, disclosed today the second part of the results of a new survey related to "The European world of work”. Conducted in September 2007 by IPSOS Public Affairs, the study examined several issues such as the storage, comfort and ergonomics as well as success at work. The survey was conducted by interviews of more than 2400 European white collars from France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Spain and United Kingdom.
Paper consumption versus digital information
Paper consumption is not too high, especially since 30% of the people interviewed declare receiving instructions from their company to reduce the amount of printing. 59% of Europeans print less than 26 pages a day. However, still 5% claimed to print more than 100 pages a day; the paperless office is not there yet!
With 43% each, French and Italian are the Europeans who receive the most, recommendations by their companies to limit printing output. On the other hand, in Germany, only 15% mention this awareness-raising policy on the part of their companies.
Differences also appear depending on the jobs discipline: while IT processing are the one printing the least, administration/personnel management and purchasing are printing more, with respectively 21,3% and 20,1% of them printing more than 50 pages a day. Other differences can appear according to the industry: banking and law are industries where people have to print more.
2/3 of Europeans mainly work on digital media (66%). 56% of Europeans have the feeling they have less to store over the past 3 years, and 82% of these say it is because they have more and more digital information. When we look at the split of digital and paper information, Dutch employees are the ones using the more digital information with 74% against 26% of paper. They are also the ones, who have the more, “less to store” because they increasingly use digital information. On the other hand, with only 58% of digital information against paper, Italian are the ones using the least digital information, and it is not a surprise to see that they are the ones who have the least the feeling to have less to store.
Even if people tend to work more on digital information, they are still using paper information, but use it differently. “With the increase of digital information, people print and use more temporary files.” says Nathalie Boudonnat, Steelcase Storage Group Leader. “We have to adapt our offer and develop products and solutions for people that enable them to have these temporary papers easily accessible, for short period of time.”
Time spent looking for paper information
47% of Europeans spend up to 30 minutes per day looking for information or documents printed on paper and 10% more than 2 hours.
The UK is the country in which the time spent looking for information on paper is the longest. We can see that they are the ones complaining the most (54%) about not having enough space to store their stuff. And they are also the ones complaining the most about losing too much time looking for things in their storage. “The main challenge for storage is to help people be organised so that all their useful information is easily accessible, used and shared; it is to create clever products that help people use their information. A famous proverb says out of sight, out of mind, it is unfortunately very true for storage.” declares Nathalie Boudonnat, Steelcase Storage Group Leader.
What do they store?
42% of Europeans describe themselves as neat freaks. Dutch employees are the ones with the highest score with 59% of tidy people; Italy has the fewest neat freaks with 32%!
Only 11% of Europeans consider themselves as untidy and another 8% declare they are not personally concerned about storage, certainly due to the increasing importance of digital information.Whereas women are more neat freaks than men (49% vs. 36%), men tend to consider themselves as the kings when it comes to piling (41% vs. 35%)!
Of the various objects present at the workplace, purely professional objects logically come at the top of the list, with 96% of European workers having some of these, featuring more precisely files, papers (89%) and office accessories (pens, scissors, post-its) (74%).
What is in the storage can really reflect the culture of a country: Dutch and British employees are the ones having the shorter lunch break and usually have them at their workstation or within the office. It is then not a surprise to see that they are the ones storing the most sandwiches and other snack in the storage, with respectively 21% and 30%! On the contrary, only 7% of Spanish and 10% of French employees store food in their storage.
On average, more than ¾ of European workers use most of the objects present at their workplace at least once a week. On the other hand, Dutch and Spanish employees are the ones who declare never using most of the items in their storage with respectively 14% of Dutch and 10% of Spanish!
Do they lock their storage?
Concerning the possibility of locking their storage, around 2/3 of white collars has it (67%). In general, European trust their co-workers, as 72% of those not having keys to lock their storage, do not particularly want to have this possibility. And more than 50% of those having this possibility do not do it. Finally only 3% of Europeans declare they lock they storage because they do not trust they co-workers. French are the ones trusting the least their colleagues with 5% of them; on the other end, Dutch are less than 1% not trusting their colleagues. The fact that Dutch people do not feel the need to lock their storage may be explained by the fact that they are the ones storing the less “personal items in their storage, with only 37% of them, vs. 51% for Europe on average). In both cases, the percentage is very low.
The size of the company influences the possibility, and the need, of locking storage or not: whereas 55% of European working in companies with less than 10 people claimed they are able to lock their belongings away, 79% working in companies of 500 employees made the same claim.
Again, other differences can be identified depending of the industry and jobs. In banks, financial institutions, insurance companies, hospitals, or companies where people work in 3 shifts the need to lock the storage is more important. Also, in jobs like R&D people feel more the need to lock their storage. “Our offer in term of lock is very wide. We propose very simple locks to very specific and secure locking systems. Some companies need to have different key numbers for the whole company; we can offer them till 1 000 sorted combinations”. says Nathalie Boudonnat, Steelcase Storage Group Leader.
Their needs and wants
63% of Europeans think the personalisation of the storage is important. Differences appear across countries: whereas almost all Italians consider important to be able to personalise their furniture (93%), only 35% Dutch's say they do. The level of satisfaction with the functional and personalisation aspect of storage is generally high with respectively 81% and 74% of European satisfied. Again concerning the dissatisfaction, French and Italian are the ones the least satisfied, and the Dutch are the ones the most happy with their current storage.
The main reason for dissatisfaction with storage is the lack of space to store belongings, mentioned by 49% of the European. The British most commonly mention this problem, quoted by 54% of them. Next come the fact that the furniture is not always adapted to the things they need to store (mentioned by 36%), not having enough accessories to be able to store neatly (35%) and spending too much time looking for your documents (21%).
French are again the ones the least satisfied and are 49% to claim that the furniture is ill-suited to the things they want to store, and 58% declare they lack the accessories to be able to store neatly.
"The interior organisation of storage is key. It is not only about creating big boxes! says Nathalie. A good internal organisation enables to store more things in a more efficient way and even to lower the total number of storages. One of our latest products, called 1+1, is a range of very simple and clever tools for an efficient organisation of the workspace – inside and outside of storages - and easy access to personal and shared information, and usual office tools.”
A small majority of European white collars claim that their company takes their needs into account in terms of storage (55%). French and Italian are the ones the least happy with their storage, however, they are the ones who think the most that their needs are taken into consideration 61% for each of these countries; Dutch (48%) who are the ones the most happy about the storage are the ones thinking the most that their company does not take into account their needs. It is fun to see countries where people complain a lot and other who complain less, or maybe care less!
When asked about what additional features they would like, the European first mentioned the possibility of being able to reorganise the available storage furniture regularly (50% - running from 36% for Germany to 61% for Italy). Being able to further personalise your storage furniture comes in second position (31% - going from 19% for Netherlands to 42% for Spain).
Finally, Brits and Dutch are the ones the much more interested in having a small refrigerator inside to keep your things cool, as, like we saw before, they are the ones storing the most food in their storage, due to their lunch habits.