Top 10 productivity killers

Are you and your team putting in long hours but failing to boost productivity? Here are 10 issues to keep an eye on.

Struggling to increase your productivity at work? You’re not alone. In fact, 65% of Australian white collar professionals believe they could be more productive during working hours, new research indicates.

The national survey, carried out by the Clarius Group, also found employers are missing out on average three months of productivity a year from their staff.

“Australia needs to produce significantly greater output if we’re to compete on an increasingly global workforce level,” says Kym Quick, CEO of Clarius Group.

“We spend more hours at work than most of our international colleagues yet we rank second last on the global productivity scale, so there’s clearly some major issues we need to address.”

The findings show the main reason Australians lack productivity is their inability to use technology as it can be overwhelming for staff, particularly if they are not trained properly, says Quick.

With all the technological advances taking place in mortgage broking, from CRM to new mobile apps, this is an issue that mortgage brokers may be familiar with.

“Since the GFC we’ve seen training budgets slashed but training is slowly coming back on the radar as business appreciates that this lack of investment has had a material impact on the bottom line,” says Quick.

Other productivity killers that may be affecting your team include bullying from colleagues or managers, and staff killing time organising their social lives – which ranked as the second and third biggest productivity hurdles respectively.
 
Social media was the fourth biggest cause, with 60% of users saying they are diverted up to 10 times a day and 30% admitting they use work technology to check it.

Of those that access social media at work, 78% log in to Facebook, 9.7% to Twitter and 6.8% to LinkedIn.

Why Australians are unproductive:
  1. Don’t know how to use the technology
  2. Bullying
  3. Organising social calendar
  4. Social media
  5. Don’t like their job
  6. Poor manager
  7. Too qualified for the job
  8. Too much work
  9. Don’t know what they are supposed to be doing
  10. Boring job
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What are the biggest productivity killers in your brokerage? Could you be more productive? Have your say below.