Top 11 Employee Productivity Killers and How To Deal With Them

​Companies and professionals are much more conscious than before of how location and job performance affects productivity. While you may take steps to address most productivity issues, not all efficiency offenders are under your control.

Even if you can't eliminate every productivity-robbing issue your team is dealing with, there are usually steps you can take to reduce the negative effects on your team and organization. These are all the eleven prompt completion killers you'll never be able to completely eliminate.

EMPLOYEE PRODUCTIVITY KILLERS

​Here we list a few Employee Productivity Killers take a minute to consider how your employees are spending time during working time.   Being at work doesn't always mean you're working.

In fact, most employees admittedly spend at least one hour of their shifts doing something other than work.

According to a national survey released by Chicago-based CareerBuilder, the behaviors of co-workers, meetings, and technology all play a role in limiting employee productivity.

The survey, which included more than 2,000 hiring managers and human resource professionals and more than 3,000 full-time private-sector employees, aimed to determine the top productivity stoppers in the workplace.

1. DISTRACTING AMBIENCE

​This must unsurprising that a task has already been disrupted takes longer to accomplish than one that has been undisturbed. Fewer people can come back to work and resume working at full speed right away; on average, returning to a task needs around 25 minutes.

Interruptions can take various forms, such as unplanned conversations and texts and calls, but it's also crucial to examine the interruptions which don't stop you from working, but instead steal your concentration, diminish your focus, and cause your tasks to slow down.

Background noises, such as office talk, traffic noise, or road construction, visual stimulation, such as flashing lights or people moving around, or even a foul bitter taste are all examples of these. There's a reason you don't make odorous meals in the microwave at work!

In average, in-office employees are more affected by their surroundings than remote workers. Remote workers have more control over their surroundings and don't have to share their office.

When working from home, 73 percent of remote workers claim to be more productive. Outside noise and disruptions are still a possibility, so they aren't completely free of distraction.

2.TOURING

​Working as a professional or running a small business typically necessitates travel. Team members can't perform on their regular activities while driving, and flights and train rides can still result in productivity losses due to disruptions and anxiety. Furthermore, you have no influence over travel delays.

It is still feasible to do duties while on the move, working from hotel rooms and co-working locations, using a laptop and mobile phone. However, due to the disturbance of habit and distractions, this task is likely to be less efficient.

When travelling, staying in touch with the rest of the team is always a problem. Including an SMS app in your communication tools contains the details of text conversations by capturing all messages and allowing team members to respond all in one location.

3. HEALTH AND HAPPINESS

​Your and your employees' physical and mental wellness have a significant impact on productivity that should not be overlooked.

A work schedule that requires you to work in an office all day not only creates short-term discomfort, but it can also contribute to long-term health problems. The two most common health concerns experienced by small business owners are orthopedic disorders caused by long hours at a desk and mental health problems with anxiety, which account for 35 percent and 17 percent of cases, respectively. While this problem can be addressed by incorporating exercise throughout the day and having the option of using a standing desk, there are many additional health and food issues that you and your team may experience that are beyond your control or prevention.

As a result, it's critical to ensure that you take time off to heal rather than struggling through a sickness that causes you to be less productive for a longer period of time. It's just as important to provide your staff the time and resources they need to recover from mental health concerns if you want to avoid long-term wellbeing and motivation challenges. Monitor in with your team on a regular basis to ensure that everyone feels comfortable raising concerns about their health and taking the required steps to recover.  

4. RECURRING TASKS

​A typical office worker spends 520 hours a year on simple, repetitive chores. By automating these activities, you can devote your time to more critical jobs that software can't handle. Simple data entry chores may appear to be as simple as copying and pasting, but the time spent doing so adds up and could be better spent on more serious matters. Difficult, repetitious work can limit your creativity; 1

therefore, these types of assignments might be demotivating.

The average office worker uses email for 11 hours each week. These are frequently regular tasks that may be automated. However, this goes beyond just composing and sending emails. Simple email operations like tagging, sorting, and allocating emails to team members may only take a few seconds, but those seconds pile up quickly. You can use email automation tools to develop rules to automate your email handling and save time.

5. SCHEDULING

​Failed customer encounters cost time, whether you're setting arrangements to meet with clients in person, calling on the phone, or simply sending a message. Although you have no influence over whether or not your clients respond immediately when you contact them, you can still minimize your lost productivity in this area.

In many circumstances, organizations may boost productivity by simply choosing a better time to contact them. According to a Call Hippo study, calling leads between 4 and 5 p.m. on a Wednesday has a much greater success rate for most organizations.

By automatically scheduling and sending your messages at the proper time, using a CRM to manage your emails can save you time sending follow-up emails and reminders to clients. In many circumstances, organizations may boost productivity by simply choosing a better time to contact them. According to a Call Hippo study, calling leads between 4 and 5 p.m. on a Wednesday has a much greater success rate for most organizations.

By automatically scheduling and sending your messages at the proper time, using a CRM to manage your emails can save you time sending follow-up emails and reminders to clients.

6. CHAOTIC TEAM COMMUNICATION

​You can waste a lot of time trying to retrieve prior messages or clarifying instructions that aren't easily found if you don't use communication tools to organize team conversations and updates. If you use a chat app to connect with your team but also give project updates and briefs via email, your team members will have two places to go for information and old messages.

Integrating all of your internal communications into one platform can save your team a lot of time by allowing them to receive and send workflow updates, direct messages, and email notifications without having to remember to check different apps.

7. SEVERAL GUIDELINES AND PROTOCOL

​Every firm must create policies and protocols to keep its employees safe and compliant with regulations, and this will always involve creating rules and protocols for your staff to follow. However, many firms go beyond with this concept, establishing tight protocols that must be followed for every activity and interaction during an employee's workday.

In addition to potentially causing stress and uncertainty, this can have a detrimental influence on productivity because team members will spend more time confirming that they have followed the correct method rather than being trusted to know how to do their duties.

8. POINTLESS MEETINGS

According to a recent poll, nearly half of office workers consider meaningless meetings to be the largest waste of time at work. These can sap motivation and have a negative impact on the rest of your team's activities, in addition to hurting productivity.

Make sure that all of your team meetings are brief and focused on the meeting's goals. Aside from the obvious measures, such as planning an agenda and taking notes ahead of time, allocating time for each item on the agenda, and starting and finishing on time, there are a few strategies that can help you be more productive.

Starting meetings at an unusual time rather than on the hour or half-hour, for example, increases the likelihood that your staff will remember and arrive on time. Meetings can be kept brief and focused on their objective by having everyone stand during them. Finally, keeping a spot for attendees to record ideas and remarks that aren't related to the meeting protects the meeting from being derailed by these comments and conversations. Getting an off-topic conversation back on track can be time consuming.

9. TIME

The most productive schedule and work hours might differ dramatically from one person to the next. According to research conducted by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average employee works for less than three hours every day. Some people work best first thing in the morning, while others take longer to get going.

This can be mitigated to some extent by tailoring your calendar to your natural work pattern, such as scheduling your most demanding duties during the hours when your performance is at its best. Schedule more simple and repetitive work for times when you anticipate more interruptions.

However, this strategy isn't without flaws. Your job will not always fit into your preferred working pattern, and you will have to compromise in order to collaborate with colleagues if you work in a team.

Aside from when you work, the length of time you work has a big impact on productivity.

While some people require frequent breaks to remain motivated, others prefer to focus on a topic for long periods of time. According to a University of Illinois study, most people are more productive when they take short hourly breaks. Again, there is no perfect solution because unforeseen tasks will cause your timetable to be disrupted.

Allow your team to work at a schedule that suits them, but be willing to accept schedule compromises in order for your team to collaborate. Employees are more likely to be healthier and more productive if their schedules are more flexible.

10. TAKING ON EXCESSIVE RESPONSIBILITIES

It takes most people at least a little time to come up to speed on a task. Switching between projects or attempting to complete too many tasks at the same time will lower your overall productivity. Multitasking is unavoidable in some situations, particularly when running a small business or working in a small team, but overloading yourself with multiple activities at once is counterproductive.

By generating time blocks for each work, smart scheduling with a scheduling system that includes time for unanticipated complications lowers wasted productivity. It will be easier for team members to manage their time across several roles and know when to expect answers from colleagues if specific responsibilities are scheduled.

11. SOCIAL MEDIA STRESS

Many businesses underestimate how much time and effort it takes to maintain a successful social media presence. The constant desire to publish and respond to messages throughout the day might deplete your productivity. Furthermore, while social networking is a vital source of feedback, frequent exposure to consumer complaints and concerns might deplete your enthusiasm and attention for your other duties.

Furthermore, social media has the potential to become hooked. It's critical not to use your time on your business's social networks as an occasion to check your individual notifications and messages. Social media platforms are quite good at persuading you to scroll through your feed for "only a couple of seconds." These small unplanned interruptions quickly add up to hours of wasted time.

Instead of cutting into your spare time or other activities, posting and responding on social media becomes a much smaller task when it is managed and scheduled as part of your regular routine. Making it a habit to schedule all of your social media activity relieves stress by allowing you to plan your posts ahead of time and giving you much-needed offline time.

CONCLUSION

Your workplace environment, as well as your personal habits, can have a significant impact on your productivity. A haphazardly arranged timetable might also result in tension and ineffective task switching. The impact of these productivity killers can be lessened or even avoided entirely by enhancing your communication and lowering the time you spend on repeated chores.

Not all productivity killers can be avoided, but by giving your staff the tools to manage their workload and the freedom to work in a way that suits them, you can help lessen the variables that reduce productivity.

If we were to break down the concrete benefits of eliminating workplace productivity killers on a regular basis, the list would go as follows:

• Improved staff engagement, productivity, and morale
• Improved final product quality and client satisfaction
• Increased staff retention and lowered turnover rates
• Improved leadership grooming and work delegation opportunities

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