Tech Habits In The Workplace

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Forrester Research has a new report extensively laying out the tech habits of the average information worker.

More interesting than what they use is what they clearly want to use.

Topping the wish list:

- Company issued smartphones

- For the under-thirty crowd; social networking tools.

Only 11% have a company issued smartphone. 30% are using their own mobile device to do work. 15% want mobile access to company e-mail. 21% would just like to have access to work e-mail outside the office, period!

Percentage of age 30 plus workers who use social networking tools on the job: 13%.

Percentage of under 30 workers who use social networking tools on the job: also 13%.

Percentage of under 30 workers who use social networking tools outside of work: 60%.

That's a lot of Twitter withdrawal between nine and five!

In case you wonder why e-mail continues to torture us all to such an extent; Forrester concludes its because all those nifty collaboration tools like team sites and web conferencing are just not catching on, as one might expect. Only one in five information workers use team sites. One in four workers use web conferencing. 87% still use e-mail as their primary online collaboration tool (oh that is sad!).

Also interesting; for the vast majority of info workers, the top four applications are word processing, e-mail, web browsers and spreadsheets. Everything else is only used by a very small percentage on a regular basis.

57% surveyed are "optimistic" about technology.

Does that mean they think their getting an iPhone soon from the boss?

The full report is available at Forrester. But be prepared to pony up $1749 if you want to read it all.

Renee Oricchio is a technology writer and former supervising news producer for CNN Financial News. She has been covering the computer industry since 1987. @oricchio