While the coronavirus enforced-lockdown working from home the new normal, business leaders feel their employees' current productivity is at 65%, reveals a recent report.

On the other hand, employees believe their productivity is around 78%, according to the report by Bengaluru-based research company Feedback Insights.

The report was based on a survey among 550 respondents including 450 employees and 100 business leaders participated in the survey which was conducted across 18 sectors including auto components, chemical, construction, consumer durables, glass, electrical, electronics, packaging, logistics, machine tools, information technology & other services organizations.

Further, the survey stated around 65% of employees are concerned about personal well being, a lack of connectedness with the team and overall anxiety about the job environment.

Also, network issues (56%) and frequent distractions at home (47%) are the other key challenges witnessed by employees.

About 58% of Business leaders indicated managing teams remotely to be their biggest challenge owing to the cultural change of working remotely. 50% of business leaders have also said data security and regulations to be a major area of concern.

A transparent leadership communication and effective employee engagement activities are some of the key tasks that employees have from their organisations, primarily driven by the lack of a physical connection with team members/firm and also the business uncertainty prevalent in the current context. Employees also see the need for software which is optimized for lower band widths to enable them to work seamlessly given the band width issues faced in India.

More than half the leaders feel that employees should focus on the future: upskill themselves keeping in mind changing business trends as well as work on planning their teams’ approach for the future, given the possible business changes post the lockdown. 

Around 32% leaders strongly believe that going forward, firms should channel their efforts in redefining themselves in this changing scenario and rejig their strategy accordingly. The other top priorities would be to ensure that employees are future ready through employee training and upskilling (24%) and maintain employee morale and well-being (16%).