As a business owner, you can be sure that there are countless distractions at the workplace. They range from office politics to unexpected disturbances and social media accounts. All business owners want only one thing out of their employees to work hard and make them so successful but sometimes these tasks are hampered by distractions which can lead to poor performance and something called distraction at the workplace.
Being productive at the workplace isn’t easy. There are lots of effects of distractions at work that kill business productivity. You know the Effects of distractions on Business Productivity and the distracted employee never is a productive employee and the company gets lost due to employee’s unusual activity.
Some of the distractions while working from home like social networking, news notifications, and emails can be easily avoided by using modern software. Which limits time spent on the internet. Result it helps the employees to concentrate more on their job. However, everyone wants to feel free and not tied to their job.
One of the biggest and major challenges for managers is to find a way to increase the productivity of the employees at the workplace. How distractions at work affect productivity and how to overcome them. In this article, We help Managers increase employees’ productivity, analyze distractions, how to reduce distractions at work, they are facing, and increase their business profits.
The Impact of Distractions on Business Productivity
The biggest Distractions at the workplace that kill business productivity at the workplace negatively & impact employees’ concentration, performance, productivity, and potential thus making more mistakes.
All these employees waste offices working hours and thus missed project deadlines, which leads to a loss in revenue & increase business operation cost by 40%.
All these directly affect business efficiency & a big productivity killer in business.
Top Distractions in Workplace
There is a low of ways of distracting in the workplace. In this technical era mobile phones, social media, email, and tea breaks are the main region of workplace distraction that kills employee productivity. We need to include distraction removing activity at the workplace for team building to get batter productivity or employee time utilization.
1). Mobile Phones
In a study by the University of California, Irvine, mobile phone use has been found to cause an average of 20 minutes of lost productivity per day. The study also showed that employees who used their phones while working had fewer creative ideas.
2). Social Media
Social media is an important tool for communication in today’s world. However, it has become so pervasive that it can take over your life if you let it. Studies have shown that social media can cause stress and anxiety in some people. It can also negatively affect your work performance and cause you to be less efficient at work.
3). Emails
Email is one of the most important tools for staying connected with others and keeping up with business as usual at work. Emails are often overlooked as a distraction because they are automated messages that don’t require any attention from the employee receiving them. However, according to research by Stanford University, emails account for more than 50 percent of all computer-related distractions at work! Email is especially problematic because it’s easy to start checking email when you should be doing other things — like answering emails or making phone calls! If you find yourself checking email more than once an hour, consider hiring someone else or taking on some tasks outside of work.
4). Meetings
Meetings are another common distraction in the workplace because they take up time away from other important tasks such as working on projects or completing projects that have been assigned to us by our managers or supervisors.
5). Conversations
It’s hard to focus on your work when you’re distracted by conversations with co-workers, customers or friends. The best way to avoid distractions is to try not to talk too much while you’re working. If you have a quiet office and coworkers who respect your privacy, this may not be an issue for you. However, if you have coworkers who are chatty and never seem to stop talking, it might be time for a new job!
6). Tea Breaks
If your workplace has a break room where employees can go for tea or coffee breaks throughout the day, try not to linger there too much unless you absolutely have to. This can easily turn into an unexpected 30 minutes of chatting with colleagues during which time you won’t get any work done at all!
How to Reduce Distractions at Work for Maximum Productivity?
Distractions are a major reason for people losing their productivity at work. They can come in the form of email, phone calls, or even physical distractions like a noisy coworker or a chatty client. The best way to reduce distractions is to identify them and eliminate them.
Let’s find out the impacts of distraction at work & how to avoid distractions while working:
Here are some ways through which you can eliminate distractions from your workplace:
- Create an environment that supports focus
- Set up systems for prioritizing work and tasks
- Keep your phone on silent at all times
- Use technology tools that block out interruptions and notifications
- Avoid multitasking when possible (this might mean doing one task at a time)
- Make decisions based on what’s most important
Due to distractions in the workplace, it is challenging to stay productive. Therefore to remove distractions and increase productivity it is recommendable to use Employee Monitoring and Employee Time Tracker like DeskTrack to monitor all the day-to-day activities for analyzing workplace distraction productivity and other issues faced by the employee to be productive.
DeskTrack is a Productivity Monitoring Software to calculate productivity, manages distractions at work, and manage 100% transparency at the workplace.
This distraction management software helps to take back control of time and rebuild the focus of employees by blocking distracting sites, giving management in-depth reports on how they spend their time, and more. Some measures to be taken:
- Activity Monitoring & Time Tracking
- Plan your day, to meet the tasks timely
- Analyze daily Task Reports and compare them with To that Do
- Say no to MultiTasking
- Avoid long Meetings & Discussions
- Track the time spent on Internet Surfing, Social Media, Entertainment
- Track Mobile Phone Usage at the workplace
How DeskTrack Can Help Remove Distractions at Workplace?
DeskTrack allows organizations to track employees working hours, desktop activities, in-out timing, screenshots, and application usage time. This software helps organizations to best utilize their working time and improve business productivity. Due to its unique features, employers can save their employees from distraction.
Activity Monitoring & Time Tracking
To analyze the team’s actual performance and distractions at work or productivity. It is necessary to monitor the activity logs with the total time spent on all the activities. “DeskTrack helps you calculate the productivity of employees based on the logs managed the app, files, URLs, and the task is done during office hours”. Managers can review timesheets of employees’ activities which are automatically generated online and easily accessible to them. Even they can also set alerts on the irrelevant activities done by the employees.
Analyze Internet Usage
Almost 40% of the team spend their time surfing social media, watching videos, etc. DeskTrack helps avoid internet distractions by analyzing the total time spent on internet activities. Software tracks the URLs browsed by an individual and separates them between productive and unproductive URLs calculates time spent on unproductive URLs to unproductive hours and provides the automatically generated report to managers.
Say NO To Multitasking
Research says multitasking is a major factor for productivity loss, as individuals switch tasks regularly, and in the end, tasks are not finished. It affects the focus and mental health of employees. DeskTrack monitors activities and tasks done by an employee or whole team, helps them to plan the day according to work, avoid unnecessary discussions and meet the goals on a daily basis.
Mobile Phones at the Workplace
Mobile phones create a distraction in the workplace due to their love. Phones sap the attention of individuals through regular notifications, chats, social media posts, calls, etc. It takes the focus away hence affecting productivity. DeskTrack helps to control mobile activities by identifying an individual’s actual time spent on apps, texting, social media, regular notifications, and calls.
