Workers only productive three days a week
Workers only productive three days a week
Mar 16, 2005: A survey has revealed an interesting set of responses from 38,000 people interviewed in 200 countries, who blame unclear objectives, lack of team communication and ineffective meetings as some of the reasons why they only manage three productive days a week.
The Microsoft Office Personal Productivity Challenge posed 18 questions to the respondents and has revealed some fascinating conclusions about productivity in the workplace around the world.
The findings show that out a 45 hour week, on average people believe 17 of this are unproductive; 55 percent said they relate their productivity directly to their software; people spend 5.6 hours a week in meeting, but 69 percent of these people consider these meetings to be unproductive.
On a personal level, 60 percent of people interviewed said that they do not have a work-life balance, and being unproductive contributes to this feeling.
Dr. Larry Baker, the president of the Dr. Larry Baker Management Centre Inc. in Atlanta, developed the survey questions said:
"In my three decades of studying what makes workers productive, I've found the most crucial skills are their ability to efficiently communicate across all kinds of boundaries, share important documents and manage the increasing volumes of information.
"These new survey results confirm those trends and highlight the opportunity for workers to get better training and tips on how to get the most out of software tools they use."
Chris Capossela, the corporate vice president for the information worker product management group at Microsoft added: "It's exciting to see that so many people around the world took the Personal Productivity Challenge and share their feedback about the productivity goals, Microsoft has a great opportunity to provide the tools to help them quickly and effectively meet their needs."
Microsoft claims that these results suggest that workers could be more productive if they use technology to help them quickly find electronic documents when they need them; use a spam filter to help them manage their email more effectively; provide advice, rather than taking on other people's responsibilities and use technology to manage their time more effectively.
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