Despite the fact they don’t hesitate to use new technology to get their work done, Albertans often stay late at the office or take work home, a new national survey reveals.
A full 69 per cent of Alberta respondents said they go into work early, or leave late, to keep up with their workload, according to a survey released last week by Microsoft Canada Co. and Ipsos Reid in conjunction with the launch of Microsoft Office XP software and Visio 2002 drawing and diagramming software.
The survey also confirmed that Calgary and Edmonton office workers spend more time at their computers than five years ago. Sixty-eight per cent reported they are at the keyboard six hours a day and 79 per cent experiment with their software, discovering for themselves its full potential.
Almost everyone surveyed in the province said that fast and easy access to information is critical to their jobs.
“These findings are significant,” said Susan Sharp, marketing manager at Microsoft Canada. “They speak to the fact that office workers in Alberta rely on their technology to quickly deliver information and to be much more intuitive, which is what Microsoft Office XP and Visio 2002 aim to do.”
She also said that these tools will facilitate collaboration and teamwork that also emerged as developing trends in the Alberta workplace.
The survey was conducted May 2-11, with 800 office workers in six major urban business centres including Calgary and Edmonton.
The success of Office XP is important to Microsoft because many industry analysts see it as a precursor to the company’s .NET Internet strategy.
Microsoft has incorporated many features into the XP products, such as Internet-ready task panes, designed to work with .NET and spur interest.
Office XP offers new time and money-saving features such as SharePoint, which allows employees to share content in a Web-type setting, task panes that give access to recently used documents, and smart tags — text bubbles that appear above a recently typed word prompting the user for options.
