Intel Hub: Power to the People

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Why your endpoint device strategy should be driven by user experience

Power to the people

Your organisation’s endpoint devices are only effective in so far as they empower the employees or customers who use them.

This digital content experience, featuring dedicated research, will shine a light on the extent to which buying decisions are based on the demands and opinions of the end users themselves. Contributing organisations ranged from 25 to more than 10,000 employees and were drawn from multiple industries including banking and finance, manufacturing, transport, local government and education. Those participating were IT leaders and decision makers such as IT Director, IT Manager or CIOs. The research gauges what these IT leaders believe is most important to employees when it comes to the devices they use and how content those users are with their devices.

I'll tell you what I want

expected employee influence over the devices they are equipped with to increase over the next two years. Only three per cent expected it to decline

agreed that IT leaders should pay attention to employee opinions when it comes to the devices they are provided with

End users are more concerned with how endpoints look and feel than technical teams, who have security as their top concern

Shared concerns were stability and connectivity quality

Used personas to categorise employees and specify devices

Only half of organisations that supply standard office hardware to employees also supply ergonomic equipment (monitor stands, laptop risers, and wrist rests)

Fewer than one quarter provided MFA to remote workers – a striking finding considering security was at the top of the list of technical teams’ concerns

allow employees to choose their endpoints as standard, with a further 28 per cent doing so in specific cases

of organisations surveyed state that there are sometimes or often disparities between end user requirements and IT requirements when it comes to specified devices

Key Findings

Despite encouragement from the UK government for employees to return to the offices which have been so sparsely occupied since early 2019, employers have shown mixed attitudes to forcing employees back to their former working environments. An interesting outcome of the investments and progress made during the early part of the pandemic in terms of enabling remote working – and the changing attitudes at an executive level it has engendered, has been the greater empowerment of employees in terms of where and how they work. Many large employers have spent the last few months consulting employees about how they wish to work in the future. Whilst employees won’t have it all their own way, and the needs of a graduate in their first role and a professional with twenty working years on the clock will be very different, businesses are keen to work with employees to find a model that benefits everyone. A hybrid working week appears to be the future for many.

When asked how they thought employee influence was likely to increase or decline over the next two years, only three per cent expected it to decline. Furthermore, 54 per cent of our participants also agreed somewhat or strongly that the quality of devices provided plays an important role in attracting/retaining the best talent. 75 per cent agreed, again to at least some extent, that IT leaders should pay attention to employee opinions when it comes to the devices they are provided with. Only six per cent disagreed. However, the widespread acknowledgment that the needs and opinions of employees matter does not extend to actually letting end users shape endpoint strategy for the majority. Whilst 49 per cent of respondents agreed to some degree that their endpoint strategy is shaped by end user opinion and needs, the proportion doing so strongly was only 12 per cent. Furthermore, 24 per cent actively disagreed with the remainder neutral.

stated that employees cared about the user experience of the endpoint devices they had been provided with, rating it either 'extremely important' or 'somewhat important' to them

Does your organisation allow employees to select the device they are provided with?

It will come as a surprise to very few readers that the priorities of employees and the IT departments supporting them are very different – at least in some respects. The diagram below suggests just how much although it is important to note that the technical teams are answering here for employees.

DIFFERENT PRIORITIES

It will surely come as little surprise that whilst IT teams rightly consider endpoint security to be of paramount importance, they think that employees rank it as tenth. Software update frequency (also including security updates of course) were also far more important to IT teams than employees. There were also divergences over cost – perhaps unsurprisingly given that employees aren’t paying the bill. However, other factors such as connectivity quality and stability ranked highly in both sets of priorities. An unstable device or connection results in both frustrated employees and angry calls to support desks. Overall, 82 per cent of the professionals taking part told us that there were sometimes or often disparities between end user requirements and IT requirements when it comes to specified devices. A selection of comments on this issue follows. A general feeling that employees tended to focus on the aesthetics and portability of devices and tended to push for more functionality than they truly needed, whereas as IT had greater concerns about the security, cost and durability of devices was more than detectable.

A Bigger Picture

There is considerably more to remote working than endpoint hardware itself. In addition to other pieces of hardware – monitors, connectivity, and so on – there is the physical environment of the employee to consider. Lockdowns are no longer in place, and employers have a legal responsibility to provide a safe working environment, which includes the identification and mitigation of any risks or hazards which might arise in the workplace. Whether that workplace is a home office, kitchen or bedsit, the same rules apply. They also apply to mental as well as physical wellbeing. It would seem that the majority of the organisations represented in our research are aware of this. 74 per cent agreed either somewhat or strongly that “employees are supported in their home working environment, just as they would be in the office, at our organisation.” The illustration below sets out some of the other areas that employees are being supported in as they continue to work predominantly from home.

However, despite the relatively high proportions of those trying to support the physical and mental wellbeing of staff, the list of tools and measures below which organisations are providing for their employees suggests that they may be falling short in some areas. Whilst a large majority are providing devices such as laptops and phones, far fewer are providing risers, stands, wrist rests, and other ergonomic equipment, which can be vital to a comfortable and productive home working environment. The distractions present in offices also help employees to break up time at their desks staring at monitors. This suggests that we might be storing some occupational health shaped problems for the future, and also that employers aren’t always consulting employees about their home working environments as much as they could be.

The small proportion of research participants providing MFA is also a striking finding – particularly when considered along with the disparity in security priorities of IT teams and employees. Traditional software-based MFA can be burdensome for both users and IT teams, as both have to deal with the implications of managing tokens, smart cards etc. Placing authentication at the hardware level is considerably easier to manage from both perspectives. Combining authentication factors such as protected PIN, proximity and biometrics allows employees to access multiple applications and tools without having to reauthenticate each time. Best security practice suggests that screens are locked when users are inactive for a defined period of time but biometrics such as facial recognition provide an easy route back to work after a break.

It now seems clear that the way many of us work has changed permanently. Offices will still feature in our future working lives, but in many cases, considerably less than they once did. Rather than fight the employees who enjoyed not having to commute to work every day, businesses are setting out their strategies to accommodate the needs of this group with those who want and need to spend more time in offices. If widespread remote working is here to stay, the needs of remote workers should be considered when shaping endpoint strategy. Giving users minimal input into the tools they use to do their jobs is unlikely to end well – an opinion with which 75 per cent of the organisations represented in our research agreed. Unhappy end users tend to result in considerably more fire fighting from a support standpoint, which nobody much enjoys, and an overall perception that IT services are failing to enable in the way that employees have come to expect. Nobody wins. It is unlikely to be a coincidence that 75 per cent also said that they had received either mostly or extremely positive feedback about their endpoint hardware over the last year and a half.

Conclusion

Considering employees when specifying their remote working environment doesn’t have to come at the expense of a security and management burden.

One way to help to bridge the gap between the expectation of employees and support teams is the use of personas when drawing up specifications. 45 per cent of our participants organisations used personas to categorise employees and reliably specify appropriate devices. Those using personas tended to represent larger, more diverse and mature organisations.

Power of Personas

This divergence of priorities means that employees are not being empowered to choose their devices to the extent that they might wish. Organisations seeking to resolve this tension caused by different priorities should consider devices which support the Intel® Evo™ vPro® platform which combine the lightweight, stylish and more lavishly specified functionality that employees tend to value with the stability and security that IT support teams and organisations as a whole need.

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The bar for good user experience has been raised

150

The big question

said some were more vocal about UX than others but it’s clear that employees are using their voices

agreed somewhat or strongly that the quality of devices provided plays an important role in attracting/retaining the best talent

agreed to some degree that their endpoint strategy is shaped by end user opinion and needs, the proportion doing so strongly was only 12 per cent

agreed, again to at least some extent, that IT leaders should pay attention to employee opinions when it comes to the devices they are provided with

IT LEADERS SHOULD PAY ATTENTION TO EMPLOYEE OPINIONS

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The desire for more effective management and the use of personas does not have to be mutually exclusive. Personas are the most effective way of mapping out the context of how users work. But personas – although fictionalised users – aren’t just dreamed up. They should be based on real time data received from employee devices, as well as their feedback gathered through surveys.

We tried it, but we found that many of our people fitted into different 'personas', and we did not find the concept as helpful as we'd hoped

agreed giving users minimal input into the tools they use to do their jobs is unlikely to end well

There were approximately 150 contributors to our research, primarily based in the UK.

The illustration below shows just how rarely employees get to choose the device

24%

28%

Yes, in specific cases

30%

Rarely

18%

Yes, as a standard

Why the reluctance to give employees greater control?

How important are the following to your organisation’s employees (end users) and IT Teams when it comes to their endpoint devices?

10 = extremely important

Users often want to have good quality system that exceeds initial requirements, whereas IT usually want to offer the basic requirements unless there is justification for something extra

It’s department dependant – sales want flash looks, engineering want a high-speed processor and ram

Users expect easy, reliable devices. IT have to weigh up cost, durability and stability and maintenance over everything else

Users want performance, reliability and ease of use. IT wants security, low cost and low maintenance

74%

Productivity

67%

Mental wellbeing

72%

Hardware setup

54%

Maintaining work/life balance

51%

Physical comfort

66%

Minimising cyber security risks

44%

In which of the following areas is your organisation supporting employees’ effective remote working?

Which of the following tools/measures does your organisation currently provide to its remote workforce when required or requested?

Laptops

88%

Keyboard and mouse

76%

Monitors

71%

Smartphones

60%

Device docking stations

53%

Laptop risers

45%

Mouse pads

41%

Monitor arms/stands/risers

37%

Footrests/Wrist rests

36%

Desktop computers

32%

Other MFA

23%

Biometric MFA

21%

Intel (NASDAQ: INTC), a leader in the semiconductor industry, is shaping the data-centric future with computing and communications technology that is the foundation of the world’s innovations. The company’s engineering expertise is helping address the world’s greatest challenges as well as helping secure, power and connect billions of devices and the infrastructure of the smart, connected world – from the cloud to the network to the edge and everything in between.

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Find out how the Intel® Evo™ vPro® platform can support your modern workforce with its comprehensive security features, leading modern manageability and first-rate responsiveness.

Ultimately, we ask, how much attention should IT leaders pay to the wider workforce when providing for their endpoint needs? How do IT and workforce specification priorities differ, and how can this be reconciled?

Read on to learn more about these findings and what they mean for your organisation

Everything else is secondary. In the case of business laptops, this has traditionally meant hardware that is designed to be as robust as possible, while ensuring they are powerful and have the connectivity and battery life to get employees through a day on the go. However, this has often been at the expense of mobility. It's far easier to create durable, powerful devices that are thick and heavy, than engineering something without compromises. The latter has historically come at a premium many IT leaders have been unwilling to cater to. But modern devices must go beyond this to support the changing needs of both end users and the IT departments which support them. The bar for good user experience has been raised. The accelerated shift to remote working has amplified both our reliance on capable mobile devices and our awareness of just how vital they are to effective and flexible working. When almost everything an employee does is facilitated by their devices, whether in the office or at home, it’s only natural to assume that endpoint strategy is shaped by end user opinion and needs. But, to what extent is this true?

Other highlights

Recent Computing research has shown that as many as 90% of organisations expect remote working levels to remain above pre-COVID-19 levels, after the pandemic is over.

Just a few personas are used: Senior Management, End User, Technician. It allows the appropriate devices to be issued to individuals

Personas help us establish groups of users which we can then test behaviours / support against. This then simplifies roll out across a diverse organisation

Different devices for different job functions e.g., call centre vs developers

It certainly seems logical and intuitive that the needs of a software developer are going to be different from those of a salesperson – although the “road warrior” nature of many sales jobs has become less important now a majority of meetings remain virtual. Many of those who don’t use personas told us that most user requirements were very similar or that there just wasn’t that complexity in their business. In many cases there was a feeling that personas were simply not needed. However, it was also possible to discern incentives to standardise among responses, partly because it enables harder bargains to be driven in terms of bulk purchasing, partly because it’s just easier and keeps the lid on the proverbial can of worms. As one respondent put it:

In terms of the endpoints themselves, devices powered by the Intel® Evo™ vPro® platform provide the sleek, lightweight endpoints with enduring battery performance that users value, along with the stability, hardware-enhanced security and remote management that support teams prioritise.

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There is also considerably less support being given to employees in terms of their overall remote working environment, with the proportions providing desktop equipment such as laptop risers and monitor arms much lower than those providing hardware such as laptops and phones. Yet almost three quarter of those participating agreed that “employees are supported in their home working environment, just as they wouldn't be in the office, at our organisation.” There are ways to close this gap between the wants of employees and support professionals. The use of MFA is one way of ensuring that cyber security, manageability, and productivity are not at odds with one another. The bar for what constitutes positive user experiences of remote working has undoubtedly been raised, but by working with employees and suitable hardware partners, and choosing devices with care, IT service teams can ensure that the empowerment of remote workers doesn’t have to come at the expense of security or greater administrative and management burden.

However, what our research uncovered was a gap between the proportion of enterprises who believed that employees should have their views and requirements considered when devising endpoint strategy and those who actually said that that this was actually the case in their organisation. Around a quarter of those participating actively disagreed that their end users should have a greater input. Only 18 per cent let employees select their devices as standard. There is definitely a disconnect between what employees and those who support them want from their devices. IT teams think that users focus too much on aesthetic qualities, over specify what they need to work and don’t concern themselves sufficiently with security. The result is a lack of trust and employees who aren’t as empowered as they should be when it comes to choosing how they work, and a disinclination among tech teams to use personas to try and understand end users better.

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The Intel Evo vPro platform is built for what IT needs and what users want.

Intel® Hardware Shield, available exclusively on the Intel® vPro® platform, provides the world’s most comprehensive hardware-based security for business.

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1 = not at all important 10 = extremely important §

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Laptops

88%

Keyboard and mouse

76%

Monitors

71%

Smartphones

60%

Device docking stations

53%

Laptop risers

45%

Mouse pads

41%

Monitor arms/stands/risers

37%

Footrests/Wrist rests

36%

Desktop computers

32%

Other MFA

23%

Biometric MFA

21%

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Introduction Key findings I'll tell you what I want Different priorities Power of personas A bigger picture Conclusion Sponsor info

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