Multi-million dollar problem of productivity - and how to solve it?

Many organizations have hundreds or thousands of computers running hundreds or thousands applications by users to complete their daily work.

So, even seemingly small productivity problems add up to major expenses over time.

On an individual employee level, non-functioning IT tools cause on average more than two full weeks of wasted workdays per worker each year.

In a 1,000-person organization, this corresponds to the total annual effort of 45 employees being wasted.

Note that wasted salary costs are just one part of the total equation.

Every minute an employee spends recovering a crashed computer or waiting for an unresponsive application is one minute less performing his work – time when the employee should be creating value for the company.

EXAMPLE: HOW MUCH ACTUAL VALUE IS LOST?

This simplified calculation is based on an example company’s annual turnover.

There’s more to IT problems than lost work productivity. Digital tools that don’t function properly also have an impact on workplace satisfaction.

When employees feel dissatisfied, they are less motivated and more inclined to be looking for new work opportunities outside the company.

Why traditional IT support is not the answer?

The vast majority of IT problems are fairly simple issues - things that any skilled IT support person would troubleshoot and solve fairly quickly..

However, many of the productivity-killing problems are completely invisible to the IT personnel.

Instead of contacting IT support immediately, here is what many people actually do:

• Bear with the problem as long as their tools remain even somewhat usable.
• Come up with a workaround – like a reboot – and repeat this over and over, never addressing the actual problem.
• Ask support from colleagues working next to them (undermining their productivity at the same time).
• Fail to even identify a problem - some people even think that having IT problems is business as usual.

Traditional, reactive IT support that relies on people reporting existing problems simply does not have the means to solve the productivity problem.

Solving the productivity problem

So, how to start solving the productivity problem?

The first step to start improving user productivity and employee satisfaction is to understand your current situation.

Ask yourself the following questions:

• What is the current state of our personal digital productivity tools?
• How happy and productive are our users?
• Do our IT processes react to problems or prevent them from happening?
• Do we have any tools that give us transparent visibility to our IT?