25th April, 2005. British employees are wasting up to 640 hours (1) - that is 80 working days every year – as a result of inefficient office practices.

New research from BACS Payment Schemes Limited, the company which owns Direct Debit and BACS Direct Credit, suggests that the average office worker is losing nearly three hours (160 minutes) of potentially productive time every day.

According to the research, the number one time wasting culprit is technology, with slow personal computers (PCs), computers crashing and those annoying print jams causing the average British employee to waste up to 48 mins each day. Office-based employees also cited that dealing with colleagues can be a time drain, with the average employee wasting 34 minutes on this every day. This is closely followed by time spent dealing with unnecessary phone and conference calls (26 minutes per day) and attending unnecessary meetings (23 minutes per day).

Michael Chambers, Managing Director, BACS Payment Schemes Limited, comments: “No office can ever be 100% efficient – but it’s ironic that so much time is being wasted on the very devices that we trust to streamline office processes. The average British office worker is clearly frustrated and for this reason we have developed ‘The Little Book of Time Wasting’, downloadable at www.paymedirect.co.uk, which provides practical advice on managing day-to-day office irritations”.

Whilst we all accept that the phone and PC have a vital role to play in making the office more efficient, it would seem that office workers believe they can also complicate life - 55 per cent of office-based employees believe technology can create extra work and just over half (53 per cent) disagree that office processes are now simpler than 10 years ago. Furthermore, 73 cent of those interviewed cited unnecessary emails and 88 per cent unnecessary telephone calls as frustrating. In fact, the barrage of unwanted communication has become so bad that nearly one quarter (23 per cent) of office workers interviewed are considering a career change to a new non office-based job.

Despite this general antipathy towards technology however, 90 per cent of office workers surveyed agree that automated systems which only need to be set up once - such as paying using Direct Debit and BACS Direct Credit - help to run their lives effectively.

With a high proportion of British full-time employees working long hours (over 48 hours per week) – one of the highest rates in the EU - psychologists believe that British businesses may be able to cut down on working hours by addressing such inefficiencies.

Psychologist Nicola Barber said: “Most British workers are doing more than their contractual hours - the vast majority without overtime pay. By addressing inefficiencies some companies may be able to reduce the hours employees need to spend at work, and at the same time, keep the workforce happy and motivated.”

Top office time wasters in every day office life

Slow PC /PC crashing and general technological failures/errors and print jams (48 mins per day)
Time wasted dealing with colleagues (34 mins)
Unnecessary phone /conference calls (26 mins)
Unnecessary meetings (23 mins)
Sifting through unnecessary e-mails (16 mins)
Searching for files / info that hasn’t been filed in the right place (13 mins)

Time wasted due to inefficient processes during every day office life in a year

 

 

Calculations based on 48-week working year, for example:
North East wastes 149 minutes per day. Multiplied by 5 days per week = 149 minutes x 5 = 745 minutes. Multiplied by 48 working weeks = 745 x 48 = 35760 / 60 minutes = 596 hours per year / 8 hours (working day) = 74.5 days.