A third of UK employees ready to quit their jobs as half their time is spent on “work about work”

A new study claims that duplicated work, disorganisation, and micromanagement are widespread within UK businesses. The study claims that unproductive working practices in UK companies are rife, with 42 percent of employees saying they spend most of their time on futile “work about work” tasks, including status meetings, organising work, and tracking down information, as opposed to doing their actual work and moving projects forward. As well as impeding productivity, this is threatening staff retention: almost a third (31 percent) of UK employees admit they have either thought about leaving or actually left a job as a result of a culture which wastes their time on side issues.

The survey of more than 2,000 UK employees commissioned by Asana, a collaboration software company. While the study shows that companies of all sizes are still battling “work about work”, businesses with a headcount of 500-1000 are even more disorganised, with frustrating duplicated workloads a common occurrence. In fact, 58 percent of people working in these-sized businesses say that a task they completed has already been duplicated by someone else in the company.

Employees within companies with 500-1000 staff also spend the most amount of time compared to other sized businesses, determining the latest updates on projects and the least amount of time getting their work done. 53 percent of people working for businesses with more than 500 employees spend half their day just organising and reorganising their work, as well as 54 percent of those in businesses with 50 to 500 employees, compared to 36 percent of those in companies with under 50 employees.