It is exactly how much time the unproductive activities take, which are related to, for instance, looking for a free meeting hall, a proper workplace which is conducive to focus, or documents which got lost somewhere. An adequate organization and arrangement of offices may prevent such everyday problems from arising. They are met by every company, no matter of size, and it may additionally support the usage of recruited team’s potential – we should remind that according to the last report of ManpowerGroup, nearly 30 per cent of companies in Poland have problems with finding competent specialists.
According to prepared by Mikomax Smart Office study report titled “Offices of modern services centers in opinion of employees”, 84 per cent of respondents believe that an office is not conducive to the effective performance of duties. On the other hand, Citrix researches show that inappropriately arranged office makes that its users spend even 17 weekdays during a year on unproductive activities. It is a rational loss for entrepreneurs – comments Zuzanna Mikołajczyk, director of the brand, member of Mikomax Smart Office board.
Why do not we work at work?
Citrix analyzed on which activities office employees waste their time. Among them:
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employees devote 20 minutes per week to look for a proper workplace, for instance a free meeting hall;
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they need 30 minutes per day to focus because offices do not offer them proper conditions to individual work;
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employees spend 5 minutes per month on looking for necessary documentation.
Multiplying these results by a number of days, months and weeks in a year gives 17 lost weekdays.
The issue of modern office employees’ effectiveness appears more and more in the business world. Over 3 million of Internet users watched the speech of Jason Fried during TED conference. His lecture, titled “Why work does not happen at work”, is concentrated around a thesis that office is a place which at least favors the creativity and attention because people staying there, with collaborators, are constantly exposed to being distracted. However, the introduction of a home office system does not seem a good solution of the problem – a group work enables the exchange of thoughts among collaborators, thus improves the effectiveness of the whole team.
Most of employees, in order to perform their duties well, need space to individual work in silence, exchange of thoughts and meet in smaller or bigger group – because both forms of the activity complete each other. Good and conducive to effective work office is the one which allows employees working in it to perform different activities and not disturb each other – comments Zuzanna Mikołajczyk.
Home office? Not necessarily
CBRE researches showed that ca. 70 per cent of employees are in modern organizations in the same time and this number will be probably increasing in the future –i.a. different forms of telecommuting grow in popularity. The answer for this problem is i.a. a hot desks’ conception – workplaces divided by specialists who are in the office’s headquarters at the moment and do not have assigned workplaces. Area, saved in this way, may be intended for rooms which significantly improve quality of work in offices, on which there have been not enough space so far. These are i.a. comfortable rooms intended for meetings and performance of common duties, interactive meeting halls, attractive social rooms – cafés and kitchens or places of rest, muted rooms for work in concentration and so called telephone boxes, that is small rooms for making telephone conversations or mini-teleconference – explains Katarzyna Zawodna, chairman of Skanska Property Poland.
The effectiveness of employees also depends on degree in which they find themselves in a team as well as on positive relations with colleagues from a company. It is common knowledge that good health and well-being of employees have a significant influence on effectiveness of their work. Nearly daily intellectual effort and necessity of maintaining a concentration on a high level are not easy tasks. Therefore, a proper arrangement of office space, which varies routine duties and provides changes and relaxation, is so important. The good solution is creation of office space which will be used by all employees to communicate, establish social contacts and especially for a moment of relax and de-stress. Diverse and full of life meeting rooms initiate a spontaneous cooperation, and cozy bars and estaminets became one of the most frequently visited places in offices – says Michał Bielawski, Financial Controller, Infosys BPO Europe.
Over 5 billion cards go to a bin
On the increase of effectiveness may also influence the establishing of cooperation with an external supplier of modern computer tools, helping to manage with problems related to printing and storing documents, thanks to which employees have a control over documentation of a company. Nearly 9 million of Polish companies’ workers waste 5 billion of ineffectively printed cards of A4 page every year. Print outsourcing is a method of elimination this waste. Companies, which decided on cooperation with an external specialist, notice a decrease in print costs by even 40 per cent – says Maciej Nuckowski, Outsourcing Services Director in Xerox Poland.