Reasons why staff are wasting time at work

If you're wondering why your employees are not contributing effectively to the business, it might be because they are wasting their time on other administrative tasks outside of their job function.

A survey by ServiceNow found that 9 in 10 managers are spending time out of their core job roles.

These tasks include providing status updates, filling out forms, requesting support and updating spreadsheets.

Worryingly, fulfilling these tasks takes an average of more than 2 days a week, with 20% of staff saying they spend 3 or more days on them.

As a result, 50% of respondents expressed that they lack the time for more strategic initiatives.

The report hinted that this lack of time could be attributed to the inefficiency of tools used in the work environment to fulfill these tasks.

More than 80% of those surveyed said that they rely on "inefficient", manual tools such as email, phone calls and personal visits.

Nearly half of the respondents also agreed that using email and spreadsheets for managing work reducing productivity at their companies.

"Email was never intended to run a company’s business processes," said Dave Wright, ServiceNow chief strategy officer.

"It is a communication vehicle that has been bastardised to fill a gap that exists in the systems permeated throughout the enterprise," he added.

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To make things worse, more than 90% of respondents felt that the productivity of their team as well as their individual productivity was impacted by the inefficiency of other departments.

It was reported that on average, 57% of respondents stated that they have to deal with four or more separate departments for the on-boarding of new staff in almost every company.

Additionally, 70% of them viewed on-boarding as time-consuming while nearly half reported being frustrated with its lengthy process.

"Knowing when you have work to do, and being able to measure how effectively you perform that work, makes the whole organisation more effective," advised Wright.

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