Introduction
It is undebatable to mention how cut-throat competition exists in every industry you name in this global village. Therefore, no organization wants to compromise either on the quality of work or its quantity.
However, knowingly or unknowingly there exist time wasters at work which not only kill employees’ time but also their productivity on a proportional level. As per statistics, around 31% of employees spend 30 minutes a day on unnecessary tasks which we call in other words as time wasters.
What is Meant by Wasted Time at Work?
Before listing down the time wasters at work, let’s understand what is wasted time at work. It would be a partial meaning if you consider merely inaction as the only time waster.
- Instead, if you work on less important or urgent tasks,
- Attend meetings in which you are not required
- Answer every not-so-important email sent your way or
- Attending personal phone calls are some major activities that fall under time-wasting activities at work.
Below are listed some common yet major time-wasters at work:-
1. Unnecessary Meetings
As per a consulting company Korn Ferry, approximately 67% of their employees find hindrances in performing best of their ability at work due to back-to-back meetings. Hence, unnecessary meetings are considered to be one of the major time-wasters at work.
Solution: To avoid wasting time, there are a few below-mentioned points that can be taken into consideration :
- Plan your meeting with an agenda – Planning a meeting with an agenda in mind prevents you and your team from getting deviated to irrelevant discussion and would save time.
- Fix a time limit to finish meetings within it – Planning meetings keeping a deadline of 30 minutes or so also saves a lot of time for you and your team.
- Include only necessary members – Neither it makes sense to include the entire department in a meeting nor it is going to support the agenda decided for the meeting.
2. Social Media
Time-wasting at work has been more due to social media. Social media platforms like Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook are enough to get you lost in their scroll session. Though social media is a very effective tool for networking and marketing it is all about making a self balance.
Solution
The solution to this sort of time waster at work is very simple wherein when you find yourself too much engrossed in social media, you should make efforts to cut back from it. It can be either fixing a particular time for its usage or installing website-blocking tools like Freedom or StayFocused.
3. Overloaded Emails
As per a study by McKinsey Global Institute, 28% of employees spend their day reading and responding to emails.
Solution
Fixing a time slot to check and respond to emails not only saves your energy for focus and refocus but also simplifies the act of checking and responding to emails.
4. Procrastination
Procrastination is an act of postponing completing certain tasks. Therefore, it can also be called one of the prominent time wasting activities in the workplace.
Solution
Breaking tasks into smaller chunks helps deal with this time wasting activity. Let’s say you are supposed to write a 1000 words article in a day, you may probably break it into chunks of 200 words with a break. This method of breaking a task into chunks is called the Pomodoro method. Hence, this way you will be able to deal with the psychology of completing a heavy task which ultimately leads to procrastination.
Also Read: What is Procrastination at Work & How to Stop It?
5. Unclear Objectives
It goes without any doubt unless you have your vision/target clear, you cannot stay focused for long on the activity that you have been doing. Unclear objectives not only become a reason for time wasting at the workplace but also one of the major reasons for time wasting in life.
Solution
It becomes your responsibility to ensure that you and your team are well-clear about the goals and objectives that need to be achieved. Not only this, train your team to set their personal goals so as to stay motivated till the end.
6. Perfectionism
What can be better than striving for excellence there should not be too much concern regarding achieving perfectionism.
Solution
Instead of only focusing on perfectionism one should focus upon delivering the best of his performance in a given frame of time. It is definitely a time waste to spend hours and hours perfecting small details. On the other hand, the same energy can be invested in completing multiple tasks in the given course of time.
Besides, you can also speak with your manager regarding the quality of work that needs to be delivered and work upon striving for perfection accordingly.
7. Multitasking
You might have experienced that whenever you decide to multitask, your brain gets overloaded and makes more mistakes. It is said, ” Focus is saying yes to 1 and no to the other 99 things.”
Solution
Besides, if you get bored performing one task for a longer period of time, then you may break your multiple tasks into more manageable chunks. Hence, you will be able to skyrocket your performance by following the given guidelines.
8. Lack of Organization & Planning
Knowing what you need to do at a given point in time is priceless and has proved to be a huge time-saving thing.
Solution
Without prioritizing a task, you may end up wasting time and still cannot end up completing one either. Therefore, to avoid time wasting at work, organization, and planning has to be an intrinsic part of your daily work routine.
9. Using Outdated Technology & Equipment
It is not that using old and outdated technology and equipment does not get your work done but considering the competition, I am sure you would not want to settle with lower productivity.
Solution
It goes without saying that technology is multiplying in its latest versions every day. Therefore, to avoid time wasting at work, it becomes very crucial to stay updated to what’s latest in equipment and technology used in your business. This method will not only save a lot of time to you and your team but also would bring immense productivity at work.
10. Helping with Coworkers’ Tasks
Nothing can beat the theory of teamwork. The distribution of work in a team is never the same. Sometimes, your team members may need extended help to complete a task on time.
Solution
Ensure that your tasks are completed on time, it is always a good option to extend help to your teammates in whichever way you can. It would not only reduce their work pressure but would also save their time which would proportionally enhance the team’s efficiency of work in a given duration of time.
11. Lack of Delegation
Just think of taking it all on your plate! Sounds too weird and impossible right? But that’s all employees and their managers tend to do.
Solution
All are born with a certain capacity, therefore in order to complete a given task, you should learn to work smartly and start delegating tiny tasks either to your juniors or teammates.
12. Disorganization
Do you find yourself stuck at finding your oh-so-important file before your meeting? Or do you struggle to find some digital folder when it comes to sharing data in the middle of a meeting? So, these are the symptoms of disorganization.
Solution
You need to start decluttering your space of work and organize files belonging to some relevant folders. This method will not only release half of the stress at work but would also reduce one more time wasted at work.
Why Do Employees Tend to Waste Time at Work?
The reason for the same is definitely not a deliberate effort to show inaction towards work. On the other hand, time wasting at work for employees means either procrastinating, experiencing boredom, etc. When it comes to getting down to the root cause of it, there are internal and external time-wasters at work. However, we have understood them all miscellaneously.
As per Statista research, 80% of employees find chatty colleagues as the most distracting element in a workplace wherein office noise holds the second position with 70%. Besides, overwhelming changes at work are said to distract a share of 61% with meeting distractions to impact a share of 60%. Last but not least, for a share of 56% of employees, social media is a huge potential for wasting time.
How DeskTrack Helps in Dealing With Time Wasters at the Workplace?
Here are some benefits that help in dealing with time wasters at the workplace:
1. Track Time
DeskTrack tracks not only your Desktop time but also Productive & Unproductive time. Such a system clearly sets a demarcation between your duration of presence at the desktop and productive – unproductive duration. Take your business one step ahead with accurate & authenticate time logs of attendance, activities & tasks performed by using the best employee time tracking software.
2. Track Activities
DeskTrack is not only designed to track your time at work but also it is developed in such a way that it tracks all your activities performed in the system. Be it how much you have accessed work-related files, URLs, or apps or accessed your personal work-related files/URLs, DeskTrack captures it all with the application and url tracking software.
3. Track Productivity
Your productivity at work directly indicates how well you manage to get rid of time-wasters at the workplace. Therefore, DeskTrack, an employee productivity tracker is designed to create metrics of the productivity delivered by you in a given course of time.
4. Project Timesheets
This feature of DeskTrack is proved to be more useful to managerial employees as they can clearly observe which team member is progressing or where he stands on the allotted projects.
5. Real-Time Screen View
This feature developed in DeskTrack again solves managerial/admin purposes to keep a close watch on real-time employees’ activities. This feature lets management observe time wasters in an organization and come up with relevant solutions regarding it. To explore more of its solutions.
DeskTrack is incomparably designed to capture billable hours finished by employees on a daily basis. This not only does a relevant cost-cutting for the management but also encourages employees to avoid time-wasting at work and enhance their productivity.
Conclusion
To put it in a nutshell, once you figure out the Time Wasters At Work that is responsible for your decreased efficiency, you can definitely enjoy the benefits of an improved workflow. This will not only set you more productive but also more motivated, self-confident, and happier.
