Mobile device failures are having an increasingly significant impact on the day-to-day operations of businesses across the US, according to new research.

Over half (51%) of workers polled in the 2nd annual State of Enterprise Mobility Survey, which was commissioned by B2M Solutions, reported experiencing at least one mobile issue per month that hinders their ability to do their job.

These problems are still on the rise, with more than a third (37%) of workers saying the number of issues they’ve experienced with mobile devices over the last 12-18 months has increased. The research reveals that the top three problems or causes of device failure as stated by workers are: unreliable network connections (45%), battery failure (41%) and applications crashing or becoming unstable (40%).

The impact of these failures is significant in terms of employee well-being, with two thirds (66%) of workers reporting anxiety or increasing levels of stress when issues with their mobile devices prevent them from doing their job, an increase from 39% of workers in last year’s survey.

This is also hurting enterprises when it comes to productivity, with 95% of all workers affected by mobile issues stating that it has negatively impacted their productivity. Meanwhile, 37% of workers have taken at least one day off in the last 12 months due to the stress of not being able to do their job because of mobility issues, more than double from last year’s survey (16%).

“B2M highlights the problems experienced by line workers in the Total Cost of Ownership models VDC has been promoting for 10 years,” said Eric Klein, Director, Enterprise Mobility & Connected Devices at VDC Research. “This recent research by B2M suggests the problem may be far higher than what IT sees, and is, therefore, a significant cost to the business which must be attacked using proactive visibility tools such as what B2M’s Elemez brings to the market.”

“Mobility is a business-critical asset across most enterprises today, yet this research clearly highlights that mobile device failures are high in volume; negatively impacting productivity, staff morale and costing businesses revenue,” said Gary Lee, Chief Revenue Officer of B2M Solutions. “The research also reveals is a clear gap between the issues impacting frontline workers and visibility of these among the IT department.”

“While 95% of workers affected by mobile device issues say it has hindered their productivity, only 33% of IT workers believed this was the case. This is where businesses need to go beyond mobile device management and implement solutions that provide them with actionable insights and real-time visibility, across the board, into the mobility issues impacting their workforces. Proactively spotting and fixing problems, and in some cases even predicting them, is the key to better management of business-critical mobile devices and applications, and the user experience for all mobile users.”