Perhaps one of the most common mantras that businesses tend to follow is ‘time is money.’ Meaning any wasted time, is then wasted money. Unfortunately, as many business owners or managers have come to find out, wasting time at work is fairly common. Research indicates that most time wasted in the office is spent on cell phones, gossip, and internet browsing not related to work; in that specific order. However, a majority of organizations also waste a great deal of time dealing with IT-related issues, which arguably does more harm than any social media browsing could.
Just how much time is wasted as a result of IT-related issues? On average, the typical employee will waste nearly 22 minutes a day dealing with some form of hardware issue. While this may seem minuscule by the day, this comes out to nearly an hour and a half of wasted employee time per week. On the year, that’s nearly two weeks of effective work time being lost per employee. That is simply unacceptable.
Troubleshooting these issues can be difficult, as they vary widely throughout any organization. In some cases, employees’ mobile devices may experience some issues. Of those that do, 70% of users claim they experience poor Wi-FI or signal coverage from their provider. If this issue weren’t enough, another 63% claim that their devices’ batteries are lacking and that they’re dying at a much more accelerated rate. Even if your employees’ mobile devices do remain on, 62% of them will still experience frequent app crashes that hinder their work. To top it all off, 44% of employees have indicated that their mobile devices frequently reboot on their own, which can lead to loss of quality work if not properly stored and saved.
Believe it or not, these statistics might not even truly shine a light on how severe this issue is in some organizations, as a number of employees don’t even report their IT-related problems. 90% of those who do submit a report, indicate that it takes no less than half an hour to resolve the issue. Which makes it much easier to believe that 60% of those that do experience these sorts of issues feel immense stress when these issues prevent them from fulfilling their responsibilities.
Not to mention that these are issues organizations have begun experiencing as a result of remote work. In-office IT issues are often just as troubling. Nearly a third of all in-office employees experience slowly running hardware. One in four employees deal with regular internet connectivity issues, and one in five deal with phishing and data breach threats. All of these woes are often the biggest hinderance on in-office productivity. In fact, the more often employees are distracted, the harder it is for them to get back on track. On average, employees take 23 minutes to return to their work after being interrupted by these IT-related issues.
Luckily, there are a number of ways that organizations can combat the amount of IT-related issues they face on a regular basis, thus saving their employees time and improving their productivity. For more information on how to do so, be sure to review the infographic coupled with this post. Courtesy of Time Technology.
