The performance of a company is highly dependent on its employees and how they work, so it should come as no surprise that there is a lot of information out there about employee productivity.
However, as is the case with most topics, there are numerous unsupported rumours about employee productivity that have made the rounds throughout the business world. For example, we’ve all heard the claim that waking up early automatically makes you more successful, or that employees who prefer to work from home are lazier and therefore less productive. Now, we know that this isn’t true. Productivity can be impacted by hundreds of different factors, including employee wellbeing, the tools you provide, or even the layout of your office!
The good news is, the more you’re aware about the various factors that has an influence on your team, the more you can do to increase productivity and build a stronger company! So keep reading for our top seven employee productivity facts below, they might just surprise you!
As expected, how your office is laid out can have a huge impact on the way we work. And it’s not just about the floor plan either! There are many environmental factors that have a subtle effect on how productive you are.
As it turns out, meetings are not as efficient as we once believed. That’s not to say they’re not important, but as the below statistics will show – there can be too much of a good thing!
There are several reasons for this, whether it’s because there are too many unnecessary people in the meeting, talking about tasks outside of the meeting agenda, or having meetings for activities that can be handled over email. Don’t get us wrong, when done right, meetings can be extremely resultful! But in order to have more successful and productive meetings, it’s best to set a clear agenda prior to the meeting, keep the meeting short, and carefully consider who is and isn’t needed to join the meeting before sending a mass invite out to your whole team.
According to a survey by Accountemps, over one third of working professionals said that their energy and drive is highest on Tuesday, followed by Monday.
But what is it that has made Tuesday such a successful workday? If you think about it, the weekend gives people a chance to rest and reenergize. Whilst Monday acts as a kind-of restarter for the work week for you to get caught up on emails and to-do items, Tuesday is when employees officially feel most committed to work again. So if you have an important project to tackle, plan to get it done on a Tuesday.
Meanwhile, Friday has been (predictably) dubbed the least productive day of the week, probably because most people have mentally clocked out in anticipation of the weekend! One thing to note is that this statistic is meant for people with a Monday to Friday work week rather than people who work part-time or have alternate work schedules.
Remote work has become a prominent part of our lives in the past few years. Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, remote and flexible work was rising, but is it conducive to work? We’ll let the stats do the talking for this one:
Contrary to popular belief, multitasking doesn’t actually make you more efficient, because the way our brains are wired means that we can’t truly focus on more than one task at a time!
In fact, a study by the University of Sussex discovered that trying to multitask increases your stress levels and can reduce productivity by as much as 40%! Rather than try to do several tasks at once, it’s best to do work with a step-by-step process or schedule different tasks in time slots throughout the day.
Numerous studies have shown that after the 40 hour mark, work output decreases by 50%. As matter of fact, new studies are finding that the average worker is only productive for about three hours during an eight-hour workday! Some companies like Microsoft Japan are making strides to experiment with shorter work-weeks, which in turn resulted in an increase in employee productivity thanks to employees using the time they had more effectively. However, many companies still expect employees to work over 40 hours a week. Fingers crossed they read this article and reduce the required number of working hours for employees!
Time and time again, data has proven that happy and well-rested employees are motivated and productive employees. Workplace stress and burnout can have a very significant effect on output, as indicated by the following statistics:
The gist of all of this is to say that companies should make employee well-being a priority. And it can be easily done with a few steps:
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