Is the office the best place to get work done?

It may or may not surprise you that a number of people find it difficult to actually get work done in the office.

Managing performance can be tricky to get right. Given the amount of time and money that businesses spend on their office environments these days (Google being the most extreme example), you can easily find yourself in the red.

Jason Fried, a software entrepreneur, gave a TED talk called “Why work doesn’t happen at work”, which you can watch below:

The key culprits for poor productivity are not necessarily things that you might expect, like people sneaking onto facebook or twitter, or taking a cheeky cigarette break. It can actually be down to something as simple as the communal working spaces.

The government has focussed on flexible working a lot in recent years which can be a good solution for managing performance, but most employers still prefer the whole team working together in a communal office. The trouble is it is very easy to interrupt your colleagues in this kind of environment.

Read our Managing Performance case study

Jason Freid talks about interruptions from the dreaded M&Ms. No, he doesn’t mean that your employees have a secret addiction to chocolate covered peanuts that prevents them getting any work done. He actually means Managers and Meetings.

We shared a post about meetings with some tips which you can recap here, which also includes some tips.

Another time waster is Emails. The trouble is emails are the best way to communicate to your team to avoid physically disturbing them from their tasks, so it is really important to appropriately manage your inbox. We shared a post about this with some tips that you can read here.

So the three key culprits to managing performance are interruptions from managers, meetings, and overloaded inboxes; so simply put, all the little things that prevent people from getting ‘in-the-zone’. When your day is broken up by so many interruptions, you end up with only small bursts of time to try and really get stuck in and work. Jason Freid explains that you can’t expect someone to get creative in fifteen minutes, and that is definitely correct.

As well as the tips in the links above, you can also get a bit more creative.

Jason Freid’s suggests for example, “No Talk Thursdays”. Essentially, actually designating time in the office in which no one talks to each other.

You might think this a little extreme, but wasted time costs businesses a lot of money, and that is no joke.

Flexible working could also be a good approach to take. Read more about managing remote working and creating a flexible working culture.

You may even find that simply getting some management training could help your managers to more effectively work with their team and improve productivity.

These are all things that Reality HR can support you with. To find out what we can do to support your business growth give us a call on 01256 328 428 or fill out the form below to organise a callback

 

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