It’s time to sit down and have an honest talk with yourself. In today’s economy, the first step is making sure you are being as effective (doing the right thing) and efficient (doing the right thing well) as possible. I hope this article motivates you to take a look at people performance and the workplace environment to prepare yourself and your business for 2009.
As the cost of doing business constantly rises, corporate leaders are looking for ways to make the office more efficient. Looking at people performances and the workplace environment are two ways to save thousands. How efficient are your employees? A study by Basex, a New York research firm, found that office distractions ate up 2.1 hours a day for the average worker. That adds up to $28 billion a year in the United States alone. According to the Wall Street Journal, the average U.S. executive wastes six weeks every year searching for important documents lost in clutter. If that executive is paid $100,000, a company could be loosing around $11,500 a year just on the one employee. Every time you have to hunt for a record or file, you are losing time that could be applied productively elsewhere. The Small Business Administration (SBA) estimates that 80 percent of what we file never gets looked at again. This means we are searching through information we never use to get to the files we need. When the average worker today has about 37 hours of unfinished work on his/her desk at any time, the need for efficiency is always there. In a society where we have too much to do in too little time, stress becomes the natural result. According to the National Safety Council, U.S. companies lose between $200 to $300 billion a year due to work-related stress. If you see there are pockets of disorganization in your workplace, avoiding or working around them will cost you more in the end. Even one disorganized person affects everyone else in the process. The small cost of getting organized will pay immensely in the end. When your business has fewer resources, it’s important to maximize what is available to you. Your workforce is your greatest asset! Inventing in people performance and the workplace environment is investing in the future of your business.
I welcome your comments and questions,
Melinda Smith, CPO(R)
