Majority of British employees believe their companies would prioritise business continuity over Covid safety

But 87 per cent of employees said their organisations have created new and better ways of working during the pandemic period, according to a ServiceNow study

Over half of the employees in the UK are concerned that their organisations would put business continuity before safety once pandemic situation improves in coming months.

That's according to the latest ServiceNow Work Survey [pdf], which was conducted from 1-10 September to analyse the impact of pandemic on businesses worldwide. Sixty percent of employees felt their organisation would prioritise continuity over Covid-19 safety, with 44 per cent of executives agreeing.

The survey, which also looked at how organisations are adapting to the new situation, gathered opinions from 900 C-suite leaders and 8,100 employees from 12 countries including France, Ireland, Germany, the Netherlands, India, Japan, Singapore, Australia, the UK and the US.

From the UK, 100 C-level executives and 1,000 office workers participated in the survey.

The sectors covered in the study included finance, healthcare, telecom, manufacturing and public sector.

Ninety-two per cent of the executives and 87 per cent of employees globally said that Covid-19 has impacted the way they worked before the crisis, although they also accepted that their organisations transitioned to new ways of working much faster than they had initially thought was possible.

Eight-seven per cent of the employees said that their organisations were able to create new and better ways of working during the pandemic period.

Unfortunately, nearly all leaders (91 per cent) revealed that many business processes, such as document approvals and IT workflows (security incident reports and technology support requests or processing) in their organisation are still managed offline.

Sixty per cent of the executives and 59 per cent of employees said that their organisations still lack a fully integrated system to manage digital workflows. In the UK, 55 per cent of executives and 64 per cent employees confirmed a similar situation in their companies.

Only 49 per cent of executives worldwide said they felt ready to accept new workflows within 30 days if another major business disruption were to hit.

Nearly two-thirds of the employees (60 per cent) want to maintain new ways of working, according to the survey, but 47 per cent of executives said their priority was moving back to how they worked before COVID-19.

The survey also indicates that the pandemic has led to a reduction in operational expenses for a majority of businesses (88 per cent), enabling them to use their resources for innovation, resilience recovery and growth.