For many people working in a business, days are filled with activity. At the end of each day, however, it might be difficult to remember what, if anything was actually achieved.
Sure, papers have been pushed around the desk, phone calls made, emails sent and meetings attended. Those are activities, not necessarily accomplishments.
A research study conducted in 1995, prior to the explosion of email and instant messaging suggested that interruptions happened about four times each working hour. Interruptions could be in the form of a telephone call, someone dropping by, or a meeting in a neutral work area such as a break room or hallway. The average duration of an interruption at that time was 2 minutes 11 seconds. Approximately 10 minutes in every hour was being spent dealing with the interruption.
This 1995 study also stated that in just over 55% of the cases the person interrupted returned to their original activity; the rest did not. When they did not return to their original activity it was discovered that the person had most likely been interrupted yet again (!), were working on the previous interruption or had moved to another task.
A 2006 study suggested that office workers in the US get interrupted on the job as often as 11 times an hour with a typical manager being interrupted six times an hour. (Read that sentence again and let it sink in).
A second study conducted during this same time period found the average cubicle worker was interrupted more than 70 times a day. A third study found office distractions take up 2.1 hours of the average day (28 percent of work hours) with each employee taking an average of five minutes to recover from each interruption to return to their original task.
The difference between theses studies shows that workplace interruptions are on the rise and show no signs of slowing down. Is it any wonder that things are not getting done?
What can be done to reduce interruptions and increase productivity? How can people in business people stay on track? And, what does this have to do with improving cash flow?
First, focus on the mission statement. If your business doesn’t have a mission it is time to create one. If a mission statement exists, it is the responsibility and obligation of those leading to publicize it to all internal clients.
The rational is that people need to know what to focus on, as a company, as a department, as individuals. If this guidance and direction is missing, people will not be focused on what the organization wants them to be doing. Make sure that the mission is clear and concise.
Having a mission statement means that people will get focused. Focus means efficiency, productivity, less talking and fooling around and more work getting done.
By the way, mission statements should be developed for each individual, each department, each division and the organization as a whole. These mission statements should all be in alignment with one another.
If you are reading this and don’t know how to get started on a mission statement, either for yourself, your department or your company, and order her book The Path. The book has a formula for developing a mission statement that is easy to use and very effective.
Second, make sure that every employee has enough to do. While work is a friendly environment and some socializing is to be expected, some people don’t have enough to do or they procrastinate getting their work done.
The easiest way for anyone in a supervisory position to deal with this is to have a “Daily Goal” meeting at the start of the work day with every employee present. At this meeting each employee can state what they accomplished the day before and what their goals are for that day.
Holding people accountable can be a very quick way to improve cash flow because once management is focused on results and not activity, things start happening.
This allows the supervisor to gauge who is working on meaningful tasks, who is not and whether workloads need to be adjusted. Plus, everyone feels better when they know what’s going on.
However, the supervisor cannot make the assumption that everyone is going to do what they say and follow through. It becomes the job of the supervisor, regardless of their title or level, to monitor what their subordinates are doing and take corrective action accordingly.
This is a key point. The manager should not be doing anything but managing the people that work for him or her. Let’s put the math to it, shall we?
If there is a manager making $80,000 with 10 people reporting to him, and those subordinates have a combined payroll (with taxes, benefits, overhead and profit of $1,000,000) doesn’t it make sense that the manager should try to improve the productivity of those people by ten percent ($100,000) instead of working his butt of and trying to improve his own productivity by that same ten percent ($8,000)?
Too many supervisors get caught up doing their own technical work. What they are being paid to do is achieve results through the people that report to them. If a person is not capable or willing to do this, they should not be in a supervisory position.
Third, remove the reasons for the interruptions. Consider where people are located; are they near the people they are working with; is there a distance or barrier that encourages interruptions to happen? Do people have the tools and resources to get the job done with interrupting others? Why not?
Fourth, put a pencil to the cost of interruptions. Total the organization’s payroll, payroll taxes, benefits, overhead and profit and then multiply that amount by the percentage of interruptions, and distractions that all the employees undergo on a daily basis. As an example, if the payroll, taxes, benefits, overhead and profit of a company is $4 million, and the lost efficiency percentage is 15%, the organization is losing $600,000 a year in lost productivity.
Taking just five minutes to calculate the number should be enough incentive to take positive action to reduce the distractions. Business Sales Information
