Between meetings, correspondence, phone calls and office or cube drop-ins, it’s probably not uncommon for you to log an eight-hour (or more) workday and leave the office feeling like you didn’t get anything accomplished.
Recruiter.com recently posted an article on some of the top time sucks for a typical office worker. Email, meetings and interruptions were by far the biggest culprits stealing our time. The article cites a study from Atlassian that found that 60 percent or less of work time was spent productively. That’s more than one-third of labor hours down the drain, folks.
Atlassian’s findings also revealed:
- Workers receive an average of 304 emails per week (and how many of those are really vital communications?).
- 91 percent admitted to daydreaming and 73 percent reported attending to other work in meetings
- 47 percent felt that meetings were the largest waste of time during their work day.
- Poorly written communications can cost companies between $2100 and $4100 annually in lost productivity per employee.
- The average employee checks e-mail as many as 36 times a day. Of course, if workers are getting 60 plus e-mails daily, as the top statistic suggests, and have pop-up notifications to alert them to new mail, they may be checking email far more often than that.
- Respondents reported an average of 56 interruptions per day and spending two hours per day after those distractions to refocus on tasks at hand.
Of course, few of us can work in a vacuum, without interruption of some kind or communication with clients or colleagues. And collaboration and idea sharing are important, so we can’t do away with meetings altogether. But before sending that email or booking the conference room, consider whether the recipient or the team will really benefit from what you intend to share. Is that second meeting about vacation time truly necessary? Should attendance really be mandatory to celebrate this month’s birthdays? In large part, fostering productivity means allowing your employees to work.
Published by Conselium Executive Search, the global leader in compliance search.
