Seeing the severity of the Covid-19 pandemic, employees have now realized that remote work has become the new standard to stay for the long haul. Alongside the benefits of remote working, there are inevitable fallouts for time management at home offices. If we go by the demographics, employees in their early thirties enjoy the perks of remote working as they get time with their kids and family. At the same time, it’s Gen Z who seem to be suffering more than anyone right now. Sixty per cent of this generation, between the ages of 18 and 25, believe that work from home burns them out. They even crave social interaction. To overcome constant zoom fatigue, inconsistent clock outs and burnout challenges, companies must accommodate a flexible business structure for the post-pandemic workplace.
Unproductive tasks that kill employee’s productivity
Employees wasting time at their home workstations is terrible for every business whether you own a small company or a larger corporate company.
After a year-long remote work, businesses should realize a few unproductive and time-consuming tasks that worsen time management and kill their staff’s productivity.
1. Overlong meetings & excessive emails
Zoom fatigue is for real, and so is the meeting madness that comes with it. Meetings can be very productive if they include problem-solving agendas. When management shows employees that they’re not expecting their presence at unnecessary or overlong meetings, it encourages remote teams to focus on meaningful tasks. Hence, it allows employees to dedicate more time to their long overdue to-dos and doesn’t drain their energy out.
2. Constantly fielding requests and not saying ‘No.’
A people pleaser at work can lead you to nowhere. An employee forgets to set priorities when he/she constantly says ‘yes’ to ad-hoc tasks. A good team wants to support its members, but sometimes never saying ‘no’ to requests can deplete your energy and focus during the working day. As supervisors, encourage your remote employees to set firm boundaries and train them to say ‘no’ in polite and respectful ways.
Why do employees waste time at remote work?
A Salary.com survey finds out why employees waste time at work.
- 35 per cent need more challenging tasks at work
- 34 per cent feel that they spend too many hours working
- 32 per cent don’t see any benefits to being a productive worker
- 23 per cent are bored from the monotony
- 18 per cent said they are underpaid
How do employees waste time at work – Are personal reasons overlapping their work schedule?
Time spent on personal tasks
Employees taking personal time out of the working day can be the biggest reasons for not meeting deadlines. Employees working from home might engage in long personal phone calls, extended breaks, household chores or other at-home distractions.
Time flies scrolling through social media.
In today’s time, every individual goes on social media to check on the latest updates and ends up scrolling through memes and messages from friends for hours. Social media’s biggest downside is eating into employees’ time, especially when working remotely. From binge-watching favourite tv shows to never-ending online shopping, everything has become quick and easy at the click of a button. If we look at the stats, people, on average, interact, i.e. swipe, type, tap, with their phone extensively about 2,617 times each day. As a result, the dependency on phones and the internet has consumed all of us big time.
Sailing on two boats decreases productivity.
While the skill of multitasking can be beneficial in certain circumstances, it often kills a person’s productivity and concentration. In reality, our brain can focus only on one thing at a time. Therefore, toggling between two tasks not only takes away your focus but slows down your brain and gives little to no result.
How RemoteDesk discourages wasting time at work
RemoteDesk’s time tracking feature captures the number of breaks a remote employee takes during their work shift. It eliminates the manual element of keeping records of an employee’s activity throughout the day. The application is fully automated. The time spent working is automatically recorded, collected, and sent to the supervisor’s ‘activity ‘dashboard.
Time tracking with RemoteDesk will help you:
- Record the actual time spent during a monitoring session to determine billable and non-billable hours of employees.
- Get a detailed activity report for each agent. It shows time spent on breaks and company violations if they occurred.
- RemoteDesk also tracks each employee’s URL activity. It calculates their time spent on OTT platforms, shopping sites, or other restricted websites.
Help your remote teams beat work-from-home burnouts
With RemoteDesk, an employee can replicate an office environment with fewer distractions. RemoteDesk has helped many achieve a healthy work-life balance, especially during these uncertain times. An employee can undoubtedly reach a burnout stage if he/she doesn’t switch off from work mentally. Therefore, make remote work a flexible and stress-free journey for your remote teams to overcome productivity challenges in the long run.
