More than two-thirds (68%) of employees in the UK have admitted they get so many distractions and message notifications during work that it鈥檚 holding them back from being more productive. This is according to new research from Advanced聽which also reveals 22% have聽so many distractions that their working day is never spent fully on actual work.
The 2021 Workforce Trends Survey, which questioned 1,058 employees, suggests that the days of multi-tasking are over and that employees have now reached technology saturation which is actually reversing people鈥檚 productivity and slowing them down.
鈥淪pinning multiple plates at once may seem to be a good way to get a lot of things done quickly,鈥� says Gordon Wilson, CEO at Advanced. 鈥淗owever, our cognitive ability is in fact impaired as our brains can鈥檛 handle the constant switching from one focus to the next very well. This consequently causes confusion and affects people鈥檚 ability to focus. Throw home working into the mix 鈥� where there are distractions like answering the door and household chores and it can become incredibly hard for people to work efficiently during working hours.鈥�
For 69% of employees surveyed in the report, the number of business apps they use at work has increased during Covid-19, which is perhaps no surprise given the meteoric rise of tools like Zoom, Teams and Slack to facilitate remote working. For some, these have been a lifesaver and helped them to work smarter while, for others, it鈥檚 been a hindrance, especially those who struggle to work in isolation and have spent their entire career working in close proximity to others. In fact, 17% say the uplift in apps is thwarting their productivity.
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Email, while necessary for communication and engagement is another one of the many technological distractions. One in four (26%) of employees are turning off their email for one hour every day to focus on urgent work. More than half (54%) are also expected to perform urgent tasks outside their working hours, suggesting an erosion of barriers between work and home time, while 38% have taken less sick leave, potentially working on when ill.
Gordon continues: 鈥淧eople don鈥檛 work well when they are feeling isolated, overworked and unappreciated, yet it鈥檚 clear that some managers aren鈥檛 doing what鈥檚 best for their team. It鈥檚 critical they set boundaries between working and personal hours, ensuring that staff take enough time away from their desks and not emailing teams outside of hours. This is a great time to consider introducing new initiatives, like Friday afternoons off, or even following the footsteps of Bumble which last month said it was giving all of its staff a week off, with full pay and the instruction to fully switch-off, to counter what it described as 鈥榗ollective burnout鈥�.
鈥淚n addition, managers can support employees, even those working at home, by helping them to address potential distractions. It could be that employers help staff to personalise their own workspace or introduce a聽single sign on system which keeps聽all of their business apps in one place but without the negatives of multiple pinging, reminders and alarms.鈥�
Other key findings include:
- 60% of people would invest in a dedicated working space if their employer introduced a hybrid working policy
- 70% want to return to the office in some form and half say they want to spend no more than half the week in the office
- 60% say their employers need to have a clear hybrid working policy
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