The London office of large global bank recently commissioned a survey of 143 of its staff to find out where they spend most of their time.
Managing email was the top answer taking up 170 minutes of the working day. (These results would put the bank’s staff in the top 15% of all Emailogic clients in terms of time spent on email)
As well as being heavy email users they also discovered the staff spent a lot of time managing large volumes of information.
The third highest proportion of the working day was spent in meetings – and in some cases unproductive or unnecessary meetings which they did not need to attend.
These results – while quite startling – will not be unusual.
Most companies will have the same issues: email and information overload combine with unproductive meetings to sap productivity and increase staff stress.
Why is this still the case, in an age where communications are faster and there is more focus on productivity than ever before?