Office workers are wasting time using slow and outdated technology. In some cases, workers are wasting more time than they spend on holiday each year.
Trying to run an office which is as efficient and productive as possible isn’t easy. Many people might think that technology can help us to achieve this, but in the real world, old devices and software that is not user-friendly are forcing people to waste valuable time.
New research from Sharp has uncovered that the average UK office worker wastes at least 21 days each year due to slow or outdated technology, a time-frame which is longer than the paid annual leave of many UK workers.
The survey of over 1,000 office workers in the UK found that this adds up to almost 40 minutes wasted per employee per day, the equivalent of 167 hours or four weeks of dead time every year, costing businesses over £2,100 per employee per year.
The biggest time drain reported was searching for files on a server – 23 minutes per day – thanks to poor search tools. Other routine time wasters include using the printer: seven minutes spent each day waiting for it to warm up; and nearly ten minutes waiting for pages to come out.
This dead time spent using poor office systems and equipment means lost opportunities, lost profits and even lost employees. Almost 80 per cent of respondents said that their workplace is out of date when it comes to technology. And if their office didn’t have such outdated technology, over half of workers (53 per cent) said they would be more productive, and nearly one in seven people (14 per cent) said they would stop looking for another job, suggesting a big opportunity for businesses to improve both output and staff retention.
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