Cambridgeshire Workers More Concerned with Wi-Fi than Rest of UK

Cambridgeshire workers place more importance on their office having a strong internet connection than anywhere else in the UK, according to the latest survey released by international real estate advisor Savills and the British Council for Offices (BCO).

The report was entitled ‘What Workers Want’ and revealed that workers in Cambridgeshire believe that good quality wireless internet access is the second most important factor, second only to the length of commute.

Nationally, 74% of office workers said that the length of commute was ‘important’ or ‘very important’, compared with 81% in Cambridgeshire.

It is perhaps unsurprising that workers care about the length of their commute as debates continue regarding the city’s problematic infrastructure.

However, there is less concern from Cambridgeshire workers about good public transport connections with only just more than 50% of workers in the area citing this as important, compared with 71% throughout the UK.

Directly resulting from these issues, Cambridge has one of the country’s biggest percentage of cycle commuters, which is why 34% of the city’s workers see bicycle storage as important, second only to Bristol in regarding this as important.

The poll of 1,132 office workers throughout the country investigated the factors that employees regard as most important and the extent to which they believe that their current environment satisfies those needs.

At present, there seems to be some mismatch between what workers in Cambridgeshire see as important compared to current levels of satisfaction.

Savills’ Director of Research, Steve Lang, commented: “Length of commute is a common concern across the whole of the UK, but it is interesting to see that access to good quality wireless is more important in Cambridgeshire than anywhere else in the UK.

Lang added that the city itself has one of the highest volume of knowledge intensive firms in the country, so quiet space and a strong internet connection are going to play a large role in the day to day running of these businesses.