Wednesday, October 13, 2010

7 Ways Time Is Wasted At Work

By Robert Berry-Smith





Although many people spend their week looking forward to the weekend, for those that have mountains of work it can often feel like the working week is never long enough. Somehow, as the week progresses, we get time burgled with a number of menial tasks and find the real work taking a back seat.

To help you avoid them, here are seven of the most common ways time is wasted in the workplace.

1. One of the biggest drains on your time is having to answer unnecessary calls. From sales calls to non-urgent discussions, it can all distract from the important work you need to carry out. Even your more important calls may not get the attention they require if you're busy with others.

2. If you're a social media fanatic, be careful that it doesn't eat up too much of your time. Websites like Facebook and Twitter have so much going on that it can be easy to get side-tracked.

3. Other websites are also major time drains. You only have to click on one thing and three links later you're still browsing and have lost half and hour.

4. One of the biggest ways we're time burgled during the week is during our commute. If you spend an hour getting to work and the same going home, that's 10 hours of your time that could be spent doing work. Working from home may be a useful option.

5. Office chatter is another time-killer and while you may enjoy your casual workplace, it could be stopping you from getting on with important tasks. If you don't have your own office to get down to work in, try locking yourself in the boardroom for a few hours to break the back of a big task.

6. Another way we lose time is by turning up late. It might only be 10 or 15 minutes, but the knock on effect can be a problem, especially once you've spent time checking emails, making yourself a cup of tea and catching up with colleagues.

7. However, perhaps the biggest time eating problem is bad planning. By not being organised, your priorities might not be as they should. If you're switching between jobs or not finishing what you start, you could end up at the end of the week with very few things ticked off your To Do list.

So, if you can get organised, you might be on your way to a productive week. To solve the problem with time spent on the phone, why not consider using an inbound contact centre or live call handling service. They can deal with the less important calls, leaving you to take the urgent ones and get on with your work.



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