Did you know that the average person wastes up to 2 hours per day?
Employers have been looking for intuitive ways to improve work productivity for centuries. When it comes to wasted time, it’s all about the little things. They realize that one employee’s hourly cigarette break at work can add up to a lot over the course of a month or year.
Some wasted time is due to work procrastination and goofing off. But oftentimes the biggest time wasters include when employees are on the clock.
In this guide, we’re going to discuss the 8 causes (and fixes) for wasted time at the workplace.
1. Nonstop Emails
Raise your hand if you’ve been in this situation before: you arrive at work and open Outlook first thing. Immediately, you get bombarded with dozens and dozens of emails.
Emails are good, and help to keep things in order at work. But most of the time these emails amount to a minor policy change or reminder about project deadlines.
The Fix
Streamline your emails rather than sending one for every paltry thought. Focus on topic-specific newsletters that give a digest of the most important information. Save the one-liners for emergencies and missives about misbehavior.
2. Notifications from At Work Applications
Slack, Teams, and Zoom. These are the bedrock of employee collaboration tools. But as useful as they are, they have the same problem as smartphones: they’re distracting.
Whether they make a ding sound or show a banner, this tears employee attention away from the task at hand. A hundred dings a day adds up to minutes of distraction.
The Fix
Learn to use priority notifications. Only send things that need immediate attention that way, then have employees mute the rest. They can check for messages when they finish the current task.
3. Gratuitous Meetings
“Conference room, 5 minutes!” Michael Scott says on the Office. And everyone knows that they’re about to lose another 30 minutes of their lives.
We have too many meetings at work, period.
The Fix
Similar to emails, condense everything into a single meeting. Rather than a dozen separate meetings, have only a handful. Make these meetings barebones and to the point so people can get back to work.
4. Multi-Tasking
Let’s rip the bandaid off right now: humans cannot multitask. We can switch between multiple tasks, sure, but the human brain physically cannot do two complex things at once. Multitasking leads to decreased work productivity.
It’s commonplace for your employees to be doing a half-dozen things at once. But all of those things get less attention and care than if they were just doing one.
The Fix
Teach employees to create a workspace that isn’t distracting. Assign them to one task at a time. Build an office environment that encourages focus (i.e. cubicles, rather than an open work space)
5. Mundane Tasks
Think back on the previous week. How many times did you find yourself doing something that could be automated? This might be formatting spreadsheets or filling out expense reports.
Following the theme of this article, there are a lot of little things that add up. And mundane tasks below one’s pay grade are chief among them.
The Fix
Use automation! AI is improving in leaps and bounds. Most of these repetitive tasks can be done with a few short button clicks.
6. Chatty Kathys
Everyone knows that one person at work. The guy (or gal) who can talk for hours without drawing a single breath. Sometimes it seems like they’re talking to themselves since they won’t even let you get a word in edgewise.
Make no mistake, office banter is an important part of team building. But some employees start to use personal conversations as a form of work procrastination.
The Fix
Crack down all the small talk that interrupts work productivity. Like with emails and meetings, save those conversations for the water cooler. Distracting conversations not only hurt the talkers’ productivity, but employees on the receiving end as well.
7. Time Management
Time management is one of those elusive things that everyone has their own opinion on. Some say to break up tasks into chunks. Others say to get into a “deep work” state where you’re uber-focused on the task.
Without time management, employees do tasks at random. It leads to poor optimization and poor performance.
The Fix
The time management method you use is up to you. What matters is that you do use some form of time management in the first place!
8. The Smartphone Plague
The ubiquity of smartphones has made them the single most important device any one person can own. They’re not just our primary means of communication. They provide access to invaluable personal information and credentials.
You can’t take away your employees’ smartphones. But unfortunately, your employees can and will get distracted by social media and personal messages. There’s nothing wrong with a peek during the coffee break, but there is something wrong with 100 peeks at their desk.
The Fix
Have some sort of cellphone policy in place. This could be something as simple as a mandate that cell phones stay in employee pockets, rather than on the desk. Or, you can forbid cell phones outside of the breakroom.
Make Work Productivity Great Again
At work, there are a thousand tiny ways that your employees can rack up wasted time. From endless emails to smartphone distractions, these teeny tiny time wasters add up fast. Learning how to nip every single one in the bud will save you hours and hours in the long run.
For employees who want to advance their careers, you’ll want some help from the experts. Check out the MadDev for tips on everything development, whether personal or professional.
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