The world moves at a faster pace with every passing day, and it seems like everyone needs to get more done in each hour than the last. So productivity, and using ones time efficiently, is becoming even more important to both the personal success of each employee, and the success of the business itself.
So in this article we are going to explore the three biggest productivity thiefs in business, according to recent research published by Regus, a global office provider.
According to their research, the three main killers of productivity are:
- Stress
- Long Meetings
- Technology glitches
Stress – Stress is a hard one to beat, as it has become something of an integral part of corporate life. As workloads increase and timelines shrink, it is almost impossible to avoid stress throughout the day and most bring it home with them. Chronic stress is not a natural condition for the human body, which through every period of evolution up until now was just used to very brief periods of high stress. Nowadays the norm is chronic low level stress interspersed with very high levels of stress every now and then.
Chronic stress can have a huge negative effect on one’s personal health which is a large part of the reason why it costs the economy so much in lost productivity, but the human cost can be just as important. Untreated chronic stress can result in serious health conditions including anxiety, insomnia, muscle pain, high blood pressure and a weakened immune system. Research shows that stress can even contribute to the development of major illnesses, such as heart disease, depression and obesity.
How to avoid it? The biggest hurdle will be management. As they are being pushed by the stakeholders to get more out of less, they must resist the urge to simply pile more work on top of already overburdened staff. And it makes sense too, stressed staff are sick more often and far less productive, so unsustainable workloads will in the end cost the company more than they save in payroll.
Long Meetings – Meetings are a necessary evil in the business world, a huge drain on time but they are imperative to getting any new idea off the ground. However they are without a doubt far too long and far too common. Employees have consistently ranked long meetings as one of the biggest hurdles in their working day, as not only do they steal the time the meeting takes, they can actually ruin a whole day if there are too many scheduled.
Technological glitches – Computers and their related technologies are meant to be helping us achieve more with our time, and they do exactly that. However that new time is immediately filled up with more to do, so if the technology fails, you find yourself in quite a bad position time wise. Any employer would be very wise to keep their staffs equipment up to date and well maintained, as cost savings up front can add up to a lot down the track.
So the above are the three main killers of productivity in the work force, stress, meetings and technological breakdowns. Armed with that knowledge, you now know exactly what to work on to get the most out of your team, and achieve great results for the company.
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