June the 20th, 2023 – Despite the coronavirus pandemic having altered the world in an unprecedented way for upwards of two years, Croatian online meetings still haven’t really taken hold.
It seems that despite the pandemic forcing us to look at work and especially remote work in a very different way, the classic coffee in a cafe or lunch at a restaurant will always take precedent over Croatian online meetings.
Croatian companies don’t have as many online meetings as the European Union average
As Poslovni Dnevnik/Marija Brnic writes, approximately 40% of Croatian companies used online meetings in their business last year, according to Eurostat data. This model of work exploded across the bloc during the recent public health crisis, when companies turned to virtual meetings in order to overcome epidemiological restrictions.
The use of digital technology is also generally taken as a step forward by which companies can relatively easily strengthen their competitiveness. It simplifies organisation, reduces costs, shortens time and enables participation regardless of the distance of the location, although, of course, this way of doing things has certain shortcomings compared to live communication.
Serbia and Montenegro outdo Croatia in this regard
Data collected by Eurostat for pandemic-dominated 2020 showed that a third of companies conducted remote meetings via online platforms, and the average on the level of that carried out last year rose to 50%. Among the European Union’s actual member states, there’s considerable unevenness in the acceptance of this model of communication in business. It has rooted the most in the north of the EU, in Sweden (79.4%), Finland (78.5%), and Denmark (78%).
Bulgaria, Hungary and Romania also lag
On the opposite side of the scale with the lowest representation are companies in Bulgaria (28.2%), Hungary (29.4%) and Romania (31.2%). Those who engage in online meetings even less than Croatian companies and their 39.9% do, are companies based in Greece, Slovakia, Poland, Lithuania and Latvia, and Austria, Estonia, Portugal, Italy, France and the Czech Republic, as well as neighbouring Slovenia, are also allbelow the EU average.
Norway leads, despite not being in the EU
Among the record holders according to this criterion is Norway, which is not a member of the EU, where communication via the Internet is preferred by 77% of companies, and Eurostat has also recorded data for candidate countries. It’s interesting to note that there are more online meetings in Serbia and Montenegro than there are Croatian online meetings. In Serbia, their share is 40%, and in Montenegro 40.7%.
Three resources
Eurostat has also stated in its review that statistical data on remote access indicate the technological readiness of companies to enable their employees to work remotely by giving them remote access to three types of company resources: e-mail systems, documents and business applications or various types of company software.
When it comes to the size of the company, remote access to work is more common in large enterprises. In the segment of companies with more than 250 employees, all three forms of remote access to their employees were enabled for 91% of them, while in medium-sized companies this share is slightly lower (77.2%), and it is least present in small companies with less than 50 employees. (52.4%).
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