Breakdowns: An average of 20 days per year go into disrepair
Ideally, the technical equipment in the office supports employees in completing their tasks faster and more efficiently. However, the reality is often different: Office workers lose a lot of time because they have to deal with faulty, slow or complicated technology. This was the result of a study conducted by Sharp Business Systems in cooperation with the market research institute Censuswide.
According to the study, which was conducted among 6,045 office workers in nine European countries, technical equipment is one of the biggest time wasters in the office. According to the study, German office workers lose around 10,000 minutes or 20 working days a year because the technical equipment in the office holds them up instead of speeding up their work.
For example, office workers spend an average of 22 minutes per day searching their company's network for hard-to-find documents and images. 8 minutes are spent waiting for printers to boot up and warm up. Printing documents takes another 9 minutes.
In total, office workers in Germany have to let around 38 minutes of their working day go by unused!
Uncertainty in operation
This waste of time has various causes. For German employees, cluttered document storage is the most serious problem: 31 percent of respondents say they lose time because documents are not easy to find or share. 25 percent complain about outdated technologies that make it difficult for them to work efficiently.
A lot of time is also spent with colleagues trying to help each other. For example, 25 percent of respondents say they occasionally help their colleagues operate printers and scanners. 23 percent coach their colleagues on how to use video conferencing technology. As many as 21 percent of office workers admit that they themselves do not know how the devices work.
Side effect: Demotivation
Delays caused by technical issues not only affect employees' efficiency - they also have a significant impact on their job satisfaction. For example, 52 percent of respondents say they would be more productive with more up-to-date technology. 42 percent are certain that their motivation would increase, and 16 percent even suspect that they would feel more connected to their employer and stop looking for a new job.
"By using outdated, faulty and complicated technology, companies risk slowing down work processes, losing profits and even losing valuable employees," comments Alexander Hermann Vice President Information Systems Europe at Sharp. "It's time for them to recognize the importance of up-to-date, smart technology that fits the ever-evolving needs of their workforce. Having the right technology not only increases team efficiency. It also increases the enjoyment of work and the attractiveness of the employer."
For more information on the pan-European results, see this Link
