One of the core philosophies organizations operate under is ‘time is money.’ Meaning the more time wasted by organizations, the more money wasted. This applies to all facets of an organization, but most specifically applies to wasted time in the office. Recent research has indicated that cell phone usage remains as the way most employees waste time in the office. Gossiping and Internet browsing come in at a close second and third. One issue that bottlenecks work in the office that’s unrelated to any of those above is IT-related issues.
Just how much more significant is this time lost compared to the others listed? Well, on average, the typical employee will lose out on nearly 22 minutes of work a day resolving some form of hardware issue. While this may seem manageable on a day to day basis, each employee will lose out on nearly an hour and a half of work time per week. Extend that to a yearly basis and employees are losing out on nearly two weeks of work time. A lot can be done, or not done, in a two-week time period.
One of the major reasons that all this time is lost is that the IT-issues at hand span across multiple different devices per employee. Some employees may face trouble with their mobile devices. Others may face network issues stopping them from effectively working. Not to mention the countless employees who will face some form of hardware issue, most commonly a short-lived battery on mobile hardware. A company’s proprietary software also has the possibility of causing employees to lose out on valuable time and valuable data.
These issues may also be underrepresented as well, as many employees will neglect reporting any of their IT-related issues to their IT department. For those that do, nine in ten employees to be specific, they’ve reported that it takes nearly half an hour to resolve their issue. All of the time lost has the tendency to place unnecessary stress on employees related to their productivity. On average, it will take an employee nearly 25 minutes to get back on track after resolving their IT-related issues, which has a lasting impact on an employee’s productivity for the day.
More and more organizations have begun taking responsibility in looking for ways to reduce the amount of time employees have to spend resolving IT-related issues both in the office and remote. For some of the methods that organizations around the world have enacted, be sure to take some time to check out the infographic coupled alongside this post. Courtesy of Time Technology.
