Longer work hours won’t impress boss, but decrease productivity, reveals survey

If you thought that working long hours may help you please your boss, think twice. According to a survey done by a global software firm, employees who work longer shifts typically make 9% more errors than those working on shorter shifts.

This demonstrates that attention spans drift over a long work day while revealing how ineffective software and poor processes are hindering productivity for many workers.

The survey also found that workers are saddled with several disconnected applications, leading to poor processes, increased errors, and wasted actions that could otherwise be automated.

“Many organisations instinctively try to solve process issues and improve employee productivity by throwing more software at the problem without truly understanding the root cause of their inefficiencies,” said Don Schuerman, CTO of the software firm that’s done the survey.

Workers tend to check their email 10 times per hour, or once every six minutes, throughout the course of their day. Employees spend 13% of their time on email, of which only 23% is spent on value-generating work. On average, workers perform 134 ‘copy and paste’ actions each day — highlighting how often employees must switch between applications using same data to complete a task.

The survey further states that employees commit 845 keying errors per day or once out of every 14 keystrokes, which shows the potential to automate more of their workflow to reduce manual mistakes.

The survey is based on the analysis of nearly five million hours of desktop activity of operational support employees — who primarily perform the routine back office, data entry, or contact centre tasks — at Global 2000 companies from January to September.

EMPLOYEES WHO WORK LONGER SHIFTS TYPICALLY MAKE 9% MORE ERRORS THAN THOSE WORKING ON SHORTER SHIFTS, SAYS THE SURVEY

PHOTO: ISTOCK; FOR REPRESENTATIONAL PURPOSES ONLY Workers are saddled with too many disconnected apps, leading to increased errors