India's millennial workforce embracing flexi-work styles: Microsoft

One thing India's millennial workforce values the most is flexi-work styles that enable them to be mobile professionals with a personalised way of how they work and live, a Microsoft study said on Friday.

Adoption of practices and advanced technology that enable flexi-work was ranked number one reason for joining and staying in an organisation by most respondents of the study titled "Microsoft Asia Workplace 2020".

The findings suggest that 74 per cent of respondents are already spending 20 per cent or more of their time working outside of the office.

The study was conducted between February and March 2017 and involved 4,175 respondents in 14 Asia markets including India, Australia, China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, New Zealand, the Philippines, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand and Vietnam. 

It sought to understand shifting employee behaviours and gaps in the workplace when it came to productivity, collaboration and flexi-work practices, Microsoft India said in a statement.

Nearly half of the respondents (43 per cent) stated that using collaborative technology (such as messaging apps, virtual meetings, enterprise social networks, etc.) would make a positive difference in working remotely from locations outside the office, and around 30 per cent believed that it would help provide timely resolution to internal issues and launch new initiatives. 

Over 40 per cent said they felt the need for cloud-based collaboration tools to increase their productivity.

Microsoft said that given the blurring boundaries of work and life and the impeding influx of digital natives (born after 2000) entering the workforce for the first time, organisations need to look at new workplace practices and platforms that integrate people, data, and processes to create value in a new digital business.