Survey reveals what affects the productivity of most employees
The productivity of most employees is impacted by unrelated tasks and administrative work as 86% in a survey feel that they lose time each day on work-specific tasks but unrelated to their core job. Workforce management provider Kronos Incorporated conducted the survey between July 31 and August 9 on 2,800 employees, both full and part, in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, India, Mexico, and Britain.
41% of full-time employees waste more than an hour
The survey shows 86% of employees say they lose time each day on work-specific tasks unrelated to their core job, with 41% of full-time employees wasting more than an hour a day on these extraneous activities. Additionally, 40% of employees waste over an hour each day on administrative tasks that do not drive value for their organization, the survey reveals.
Servicing customers, patients, or students among top tasks
Servicing customers/patients/students is among the top tasks on which individual contributors (56%) and people managers (28%) spend most time. The next highest-rated daily tasks for individual contributors is collaborating with co-workers (42%), administrative work (35%), manual labor (33%), and responding to emails (31%). People managers list attending meetings (27%), administrative work (27%), collaborating with co-workers (26%) and responding to emails (26%) as top tasks.
The two tasks full-time employees waste time on
The survey reveals that full-time employees feel 'Fixing a problem not caused by me' (22%) and administrative work (17%) as the top two tasks they waste the most time on. Meanwhile, meetings (12%), email (11%), and customer issues (11%) round out the top five time-wasters.
Gen Z thinks talking on the phone is a time-waste
Baby Boomers (born between 1946-64) waste the most time fixing problems caused by others (26%); Gen Z (born mid-1990s-early 2000s) is least-likely to clean up after others (18%), yet most-likely to waste time on handling workplace conflict (9%). Millennials blame social media as a time-sucker (10%) and agree with Gen X (early-to-mid 1960s to early 1980s) that meetings (13%) are a waste of time.
Pressure to work longer hours or extra shifts
Further, the Kronos Incorporated survey reveals that worldwide 53% of employees feel that the pressure to work longer hours or pick up extra shifts to grow their career, came from within. Of those employees who feel pressure to work longer, 60% put pressure on themselves while the rest say that pressure came from their managers, it added.
French, Indian employees feel most pressure to work longer hours
Workers in France (66%) and India (62%) feel by far the most pressure to work longer hours, while employees in Canada (38%), the US (44%), and Australia (47%) felt the least amount of pressure.
