At a time when every ounce of productivity is needed to get the economy moving, office workers across the UK could be wasting as much as 12.6 million hours every day because of poor IT according to research by specialist IT staffing provider Modis.*
In an environment where employers are putting their people under increasing pressure to improve efficiency and drive growth, office workers claim they are losing an average of 26 minutes a day because of poor IT infrastructure, such as waiting for systems to open, webpages to load or programmes crashing. As many as one in five (21 per cent) wastes over 45 minutes each day, a significant chunk of the average full working day.
Deficient IT systems are not only hampering productivity, they are also having a worrying impact on employee motivation, with two thirds of employees (65 per cent) saying poor IT affects their morale. Young people are most likely to be frustrated by office technology, with seven in ten (73 per cent) saying it affects their morale. For many, their home technology is more advanced than the systems they use at work.
Roy Dungworth, Managing Director at Modis, said: “Modern IT systems have the potential to deliver efficiency savings that would have been unthinkable just a few years ago. Yet it appears many UK offices are still relying on slow, outdated and deficient technology. In the current economic climate, businesses cannot afford to lose vital productivity because staff don’t have adequate tools for the job.
“Businesses are imploring their people to go for growth but they need the tools to do the job and in virtually every workplace in the UK, that means having an efficient IT system. Chief Information Officers and IT teams have a real opportunity to speak up in the boardroom and make a strong business case for IT investment.
“ IT is now a vital part of almost every business, but in many companies it isn’t operating as well as it might because decision-makers at the top don’t understand what is needed. It is up to IT professionals to advise on the technology and IT skills that are needed to deliver efficiency savings and help drive economic growth."
*The research found that UK office workers waste, on average, 26 minutes every day waiting for IT infrastructure. To calculate the total time wasted across the UK, this time was multiplied by the number of UK workers at 29,234,000 (Office for National Statistics Summary of Employment July 2012).
