European businesses struggle to keep up with technology changes

European businesses are finding it hard to keep up with the pace of technology led change, research has revealed.

In a survey, Ricoh found that 82 percent of employees feel the way they work is out of date and prevents them from being as effective and efficient as they could be.

They admitted that this would have an impact on their ability to grow revenue and profits and support their client needs in the future.

The report, part three of the Ricoh Document Governance Index 2012 conducted on behalf of Ricoh by Coleman Parkes Research, also gave an insight into what employees really think are the best ways of meeting the challenges of an increasingly global, mobile and collaborative workplace.

They said they believed the way to beat these challenges would be to go beyond adopting new technologies and collaboration tools. Just one percent of employees favoured collaboration tools, and four percent said more investment in the latest technology, was the way to most positively impact the processes they work with.

Instead, employees said they wanted more regular reviews of the way they work and higher level executive sponsorship to push through any improvements to the business critical document processes such as finance, HR and procurement.

And there seems to be a gap between top level staff and employees when it comes to the way businesses are run.

Although over 90 percent of C-level/directors surveyed said employee feedback was gathered regularly and training provided when new hardware or software is introduced, only 77 percent of employees agreed.

Phil Keoghan, CEO, Ricoh UK said this meant that employees felt excluded from decisions that impact the way they work, and businesses risked new investments not delivering their full potential.