Business leaders routinely work through lunch to tackle productivity gap

Although the majority of business leaders rate their business as efficient, nearly a third of respondents to a recent survey waste up to 65 working days per year on administrative tasks, with over half wasting the equivalent of a working month. Priority Software’s Business Process Efficiency Index 2018 suggests business leaders are struggling to take charge of company productivity; and while senior decision-makers expressed the desire to spend more time planning for the future of their businesses, they said too much time is currently occupied by administrative tasks.

The data suggests that 30 percent of business leaders would spend more time on strategy and planning if they had the time; 28 percent on personal development and self-training and 28 percent on growing the business if they had the time. It also emerged that half (50 percent) of C-Level execs are spending over a quarter of the working week in meetings (more than 10 hours), whether face-to-face or on the phone, and almost a third (31 percent) of senior decision makers only manage to take a full lunch break less than once per week.

Whilst working through the lunch hour might create the illusion of productivity, in reality, skipping lunch while wasting time on inefficient tasks points to poor time management, leading to an unhappier and less efficient workforce.

“If business leaders are wasting this much time on admin, it’s fair to say this problem will run right through the organization,” said Andres Richter, CEO of Priority Software. “The concern from our findings is that because of this, managers are not spending enough time on long term planning and strategy. This is unfortunate, as many administrative and logistics tasks can easily be automated using common business management software tools.

“Our advice to them would be to conduct an audit of where they’re spending their time to build an honest picture of where improvements could be made. Whether it’s deploying collaboration tools, transferring core functions into the cloud for real time progress reports or simply appraising wellbeing culture, this will put firms in a stronger position when weathering an unpredictable economic climate.”

Click here to view Survey Results Infographic