Small businesses are bearing the brunt of the mass migration to working from home, with one in four saying their productivity has taken a hit.

The findings feature in a new report from Findex surveying 280 businesses across Australia and New Zealand on the impact of distributed working arrangements (working from home) during COVID-19.

While many SMEs have struggled to find efficiencies in new ways of working in the lockdown era, big businesses reported the opposite, with 40 per cent of businesses with 500+ employees saying they found significant or small increases in productivity. 

The report suggests 2020 has been a year of significant hardship for SMEs. Three in five said their ability to carry on with business as usual has been hampered by the COVID-19 restrictions and shut-downs. In stark contrast, three in five businesses with 1,000+ employees said they had largely been unaffected by COVID.

“With just a few days’ notice, most businesses across Australia and New Zealand sent their staff home and closed their offices earlier this year. Our new report out today shows smaller businesses struggled with this transition compared to bigger enterprises,” said Thomas Paule, Chief Digital, Technology and Marketing Officer at Findex. 

So why did SMEs feel the brunt more than bigger enterprises? “Larger businesses will have been more likely pre-pandemic to have already invested in the hardware, system and tools that supported a smoother shift to working from home.

“Smaller businesses are less likely to have made this investment, or deliver services requiring physical shopfronts to be operational. They have consequently struggled to adapt and been hit harder by COVID.”

The report also found a strong correlation between the presence of a Business Continuity Plan (BCP) and a tricky COVID. “A third of businesses with a business continuity plan said they were more productive during COVID. This figure dropped to just one in ten when businesses without a BCP were consulted. 

“No one could have predicted COVID, and Australia hasn’t experienced economic or societal disruption on this scale for decades. But our report does show there are commercial rewards for investing in futureproofing and contingency planning.

“Again, this is where SMEs can become vulnerable. The investment, resourcing and skills in preparing BCPs can often be out of reach for small businesses, whose main focus is the day-the-day.”

As most of Australia emerges from the strictest phases of lockdown and gears up for economic recovery, what does the future of working from home look like? Despite the fact that more than half of those surveyed had never or rarely worked from home pre-pandemic, the new data from Findex suggests many have taken to it. 66 per cent of those surveyed said at a minimum, they’d want to continue working for home at least a few days a week going forward, with one in five sayings they have no desire to return to the office full time.

“Despite initial challenges, employers and employees alike have embraced the rewards of distributed working. Now, it’s on employers of all sizes to really need to listen to and respond to the desire for long-term flexible working arrangements. 

“COVID-19 has likely accelerated the advancement of flexible work by decades and given us the opportunity to finally build a culture that allows long-overdue work flexibility. With the right infrastructure, a supporting culture, purposeful leadership and high levels of trust, the previous bias associated with remote working can be successfully reimagined. Findex is a case-in-point. We’ve recently confirmed our 3,000 strong workforce is transitioning to a long-term ‘remote first’ operating model.

“We expect that it’ll become a real point of difference for recruitment and retention. Employers of choice will be the ones who can accommodate true flexible working arrangements.” 100 per cent of all large businesses surveyed (>1,000 employees) anticipate their employees will work from home at least some of the time when full COVID-19 restrictions are lifted.

“Small businesses need to think about how they can embrace this to avoid losing out on the best talent to big business, who will be more likely to offer this based on our research.” 

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