A worker in Shanghai, China

A survey done by staffing and HR firm Randstad has found that Chinese and Indian workers are more likely to have internet connections at work than Canadian workers. The surprising finding found that 93 percent of both Indian and Chinese workers reported having an internet connection at work, compared to 76 percent of Canadian workers.

Smartphone ownership is another category in which Canadian workers are behind their Chinese and Indian counterparts in the survey results. 47 percent of Canadian survey respondents reported privately owning a smartphone, while 84 percent of Chinese workers and 70 percent of Indian workers reported the same.

The exact sampling methodology of the survey is not known, so the results could be due to Chinese and Indian samples not being reflective of the broader labor markets in the respective countries. The sampling data came from established sampling firm, Survey Sampling International, giving some legitimacy to the results.

TIDEL Park, an IT Park in Chennai, India

The results at the very least point to newly emerged segments of the Asian economies that are deeply integrated with the internet and well-equipped with modern information technology.

Vice-president of marketing for Randstad Canada, Stacey Parker, said that possible reasons for the gap between Canadian and Asian survey results are a higher percentage of Canadian employers believing internet connections could distract their workers, and lower internet and mobile costs in Asian countries than in Canada.