As the new era of hybrid and remote work is upon us, companies have started to take a closer look at their productivity scores, especially if theyâve made the switch to platforms like Microsoft Teams and Slack. In each organization, not every person is operating at 100% efficiency all the time. Thatâs fair, weâre all human.
However, as a manager or leader in your field, have you stepped back and asked yourself, what are my employees spending their time on? Whether your company is simply getting by or truly thriving, thereâs a high probability that youâre leaving something on the table.
And for those who say your goals are being hit every quarter, dare we set bigger goals?
How the average employee spends their time
When we examine the average employee workweek, only 39% is spent on role specific tasks. That means reading/answering emails, searching/compiling information and collaborating are taking up 61%.
A 2:1 ratio of supporting work, relative to time spent on role-specific tasks, seems like a lopsided ratio. These numbers become more interesting when we dive into the breakdown behind email and meetings. Thanks to our friends at Atlassian, we can explore some interesting stats. They provide ample information to digest and keep in mind the next time we hit reply or schedule a meeting.
The (even more) surprising stats about email
304
Weekly business emails received on average
36
Times the average employee checks their email in an hour
16
Minutes spent refocusing after dealing with email
As you can see, there is a disproportionate amount of time spent on email, which likely results in an inverse correlation to productivity. For many jobs ⊠more emails, less production.
This decline occurs because time is not being optimized. People tend to default to email as itâs commonplace and they know the work will eventually get done. The key word being âeventuallyâ â meaning lost productivity, less output and ultimately higher opportunity costs.
Meetings may need some work too
62
Meetings attended monthly, by most employees
1/2
Meetings considered time wasted
31
Hours spent in unproductive meetings over a month
Itâs difficult for anyone to justify 62 meetings a month. Of course there are exceptions, but for the sake of best practices, everyone should ask themselves a few key questions that will help your organization stay on track:
- How productive are our meetings?
- Did we set a meeting objective and did we attain it?
- Could we have compiled the information beforehand and had a shorter meeting?
- Is there a follow up meeting scheduled? Is it necessary?
The discouraging part about meetings is that they are usually a 7/10 to 10/10 for one or two people, but a 3/10 for everyone else.
At Jetdocs, before each session, the meeting lead creates a quick doc that outlines the objective and requests the material youâd generally ask for in a meeting. After a brief review we ask ourselves, do we still need a meeting? Next, we circulate the document to all necessary parties and if the meeting is still necessary, everyone is up to speed and ready to work. Through this process, we can turn hour long meetings into efficient 10-15 minute video calls or in person meetings. If you multiply the number of
people involved by the amount of time saved, it adds up.
If youâre interested in attacking this productivity problem, take a look at Jetdocs workflow application on Microsoft Teams and Slack.
