If you’re like many managers, you’ve had to cut your staff this year. It’s easy to assume that you can’t maintain, much less increase, productivity with the staff you have left after lay offs. So, if time is money, then you need more time. Sound impossible? What if you could reclaim hours of lost time?
- The average employee is distracted more than 2 hours every day
- That same employee is interrupted more than 70 times per day
- 80% of surveyed employees said that these distractions limited their ability to focus
It’s no wonder that being distracted that often curbs productivity. What is shocking is that only 20% of managers were aware of the reported distractions and their effects.
How can you increase your productivity?
If your employees are distracted hours on end, then might be time to consider un-distracting them. You probably can’t ban cell phones or loud shoes, but you can reduce the effect these annoying distractions have on your workers. One option is sound masking. It’s like "white noise" in that it adds low-level background sound to reduce the intelligibility of surrounding noises. The result is that most workers are able to tune out distractions and focus on work.
Times are tough. There’s no question about that. The problem is that a struggling economy simply does not allow for less productivity. Your clients still expect your very best- and if you can’t give them your best, they’ll go to someone who can.