Research reveals employees working in professional business services waste time worth £2.1 billion looking for lost documents and information

• An average UK employee wastes one and a half hours a week looking for lost documents/information at work
• Some 491,760  employees spend more than five hours a week doing this
• Employers face the growing risk of more fines for poor management of information

New research⁽¹⁾ from EDM Group, the information management specialists, reveals that the average employee working in the professional business services sector wastes 1.59 hours a week looking for documents and information they have misplaced or lost at work.  The value of this on an annual basis is around £2.1 billion (£40.91 million a week).

The corresponding figures for the UK as a whole are 1.5 hours (37.6 million in total) and £29 billion (£557 million) a week - around 1.8%⁽²⁾ of the country’s GDP.  EDM Group says that this issue will get worse because the amount of information and data employees receive is increasing at a dramatic rate.  Some 56% of people claim that they now receive more information at work than they did three years ago - 18% believe that they have seen an increase of over 50% here.

Spencer Wyer, Group CTO at EDM Group said: “There are now so many more ways in which you can contact an organisation that it is easy for employees to become overrun with data and information.  Not only is this having a negative impact on customer service, for example, we also believe that it will lead to employers facing more fines for breaking compliance laws.  Indeed, research⁽³⁾ we conducted earlier this year with senior executives reveals that over half expect the number and size of fines for poor management of information levied on companies in their sector over the next five years will increase – fewer than 3% expect a fall.

“The answer to this problem is to digitise more of an organisation’s information – this makes it easier to find and share amongst employees, and significantly reduced the risk of mis-filing, loss or damage.”

Although the average time wasted by a typical employee looking for lost documents is one and a half hours a week,  2% of the UK workforce – some 491,760 people – spend over five hours doing this, and nearly one in ten employees (9%) spend between 3 and 5 hours.

On a regional basis, employees in London spend around 1.89 hours a week looking for lost documents and information, the highest in the country.

Employees working in Healthcare waste on average 1.64 hours a week looking for lost information and documents, which was the highest of five specific sectors reviewed.

EDM Group provides companies with effective and efficient ways to manage the rapidly growing volumes of information flowing into and through their businesses every day.

(1)1,932 people were interviewed online by market research company Consumer Intelligence between 26^th April 2013 and 1^st May 2013. 

(2) GDP taken from 2011 World Bank estimate

(3) 123 senior executives were interviewed online during April 2013.

Workforce numbers used to in calculations are drawn from the ONS Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings, 2012