How productive are our working environments? According to a survey across the US, UK, Germany and France, released by Jabra, there are a number of global workplace productivity trends that are evident.

These include:

• Workspace: Home is where the productivity is: four times more employees in 2018 perceive working from home to be the most productive option for them, compared to 2015.
• Hindering factors: Noise is still considered the number one deterrent to workplace productivity. The type of noise that annoys office workers most, in all countries, is colleagues talking to each other in their direct vicinity. In fact in France 56% of employees listen to music to focus or block out office noise.
• Mobility: The workforce has become more mobile between 2015 and 2018. A higher number of people claim that more time is spent away from their primary workplace. In the UK, on average almost half a working day (43 per cent) is spent away from the desk at the office, be it walking around (13 per cent) or driving to places (9 per cent). This data indicates not only a growing need to consult with colleagues to access expertise, but also a shift in the way we do business. In today’s digital age, the need for mobile interaction and information exchange is increasingly important.
• Meetings: Office workers see lack of preparation (38 per cent), decision-making (30 per cent) and attendees coming in late for a meeting (30 per cent) as the key obstacles to productive meetings. The Millennial workforce (18–35 years) in particular find discussions without direction (46 per cent) to be the biggest cause of unproductive meetings, highlighting that businesses must look into ways to improve their internal meeting structures to ensure the most productive use of time.

Global Business Focus

Efforts to improve workplace productivity have long remained high up on the agenda for businesses globally. Research has shown that, on average, employees are distracted at work every three minutes and that it can take us as long as 25 minutes to refocus.

In a world where businesses are striving for every possible efficiency and productivity gain, there is an imperative to resolve the conflict between collaboration and concentration. Assessing the contributing factors that are hindering productivity, both from an environmental and cultural perspective is vital and can be done as part of a diagnostic or workplace wellbeing review. It is also of utmost importance that before you make moves to become a more agile workforce that you put in place the culture, tools and infrastructure to support agile working.

If you would like to book a free consultation to talk about how you can create culture change or want to know about how you can diagnose the causes of poor productivity contact us today.