If, from a businesses’ perspective, time is money, then is wasting time therefore wasting money? It’s no surprise that plenty of time is wasted at work, but what is truly the biggest culprit of said wasted time? Research would indicate that cell phone usage is atop the list of ways in which employees waste time in the office. Followed by employee gossip and browsing the internet. However, also worth considering, is an issue that employees have little to no control over themselves: IT-related issues.
On a day to day basis, the average office employee has nearly 25 minutes of their day wasted as a result of IT-related problems. While 25 minutes may not seem like a lot day over day, it certainly can add up week over week and month over month. In fact, that’s nearly two hours’ worth of wasted time per week and nearly two weeks’ worth of wasted time per year; all as a result of technological issues faced in the office.
The technological issues that plague productivity in the office often span a wide range. Beginning with hardware issues, specifically mobile devices, nearly 70% of employees will face some form of poor WIFI network connection. Without a proper internet connection, it can be tough to accomplish anything of meaning in the office. If that weren’t enough, another 63% of employees will report that their hardware is lacking efficient enough batteries, causing their tech to die too quickly. For those able to keep their devices alive, 62% of employees have reported applications necessary to accomplish their work crashing at an alarming rate. While 44% of employees will report that their devices have minds of their own, causing frequent crashes and valuable data to be lost.
Perhaps the worst aspect of these technological problems that employees face is that a majority of the issues will go unreported. Nearly 90% of employees who do report these issues indicate that resolving them takes up an even larger chunk of their day, sometimes extending past an hour to resolve their issues. These issues preventing employees from completing their work will not only have a negative impact on productivity but will cause unnecessary stress on them as well.
Office technology is often the bane on employee productivity as well. Nearly a third of all in-office employee report that their hardware isn’t performing adequately. A fourth of all employees will face some sort of network issues in the office, and another fifth of all employees will face phishing security breach attempts; causing immense stress and productivity issues.
Failure to address these issues derails employees from their responsibilities. The distractions or interruptions they do face often take some time to adjust to. On average, employees will take nearly 23 minutes to return to their work fully focused, which adds to the tally of the amount of time wasted as a result of IT-related issues. Luckily, there are a number of methods that organizations can use to reduce the stress employees face over their technology. For information regarding these methods meant to increase productivity in the office, be sure to check out the resource accompanying this post. Courtesy of Time Technology.
