Almost half (45 per cent) of employee respondents would trade their benefits, hours or pay to work outside the traditional office setting, research by Citrix Canada found.
Nearly one-fifth (19 per cent) would take a new job opportunity if they were offered the ability to work remotely for two days a week, while 18 per cent would work longer hours for the opportunity to work away from the office.
Respondents to the survey cite saving money on traveling to work (59 per cent), better work-life balance (55 per cent) and more time to spend with family (45 per cent) as the top benefits of having greater mobility at work.
Read: My Take: Flex work should be an employer perk, not an obligation
The research also found that 75 per cent of respondents say all employers should offer the ability to work remotely, while 96 per cent want jobs that provide a good work-life balance.
In a separate piece of research conducted by Citrix Canada, 83 per cent of Canadian information technology companies say their employees’ ability to work remotely means letting them send emails from their smartphones, while two-thirds of respondents define enterprise mobility as setting up staff with cell phones.
More than a third (38 per cent) of companies surveyed say they allow their employees to work from anywhere but only on corporate devices.
“This policy conflicts with the huge uptake in BYOD [bring your own device] over the past few years which is only expected to grow,” said Michael Murphy, country manager for Citrix Canada. “Securing these personal devices through desktop and application virtualization is fundamental to safeguarding precious company data.”