Why We Did This
Here at OnTheClock, we are always doing research on making our employee time tracking system easier and better. Here, we decided to give you a summary of 9 important employee productivity statictics.
Enhancing productivity is something you should look into regardless of whether you are an employer or employee. This is because being productive or having a productive workforce will make day-to-day business operations to be run smoothly, effectively, and in a timely manner.
Being a crucial factor for success, productivity receives lots of attention; a lot of studies is undertaken to probe into it, and, as a consequence, facts and figures bordering its essence are frequently reeled out.
This post will provide some noteworthy productivity statistics with the specific aims of enlightening employers and managers on the need to be steadfast about maintaining or boosting the productivity of their workforce and on the utility of OnTheClock. The stats include:
1) Over 85% of Best-in-Class Companies Integrate Their Time and Attendance System with Their Payroll System (Source: Aberdeen Group)
Derived from a study undertaken by the Aberdeen Group in 2008, the statistic above proves how important it is to integrate your time and attendance system with your payroll system - I mean: the fact that 85% of best-in-class companies are doing this means it’s something worth looking into, right?
But even without the statistic, it still would be a no-brainer to suggest that a reliable and accurate time-tracking system lays down the foundation for an accurate, effective payroll process thereby saving HR teams a lot of time. There’s, therefore, no wonder why OnTheClock is focused on making this extremely easy.
On-The-Clock’s PTO tracking allows for a smoother and more accurate payroll process as it enables employees to request paid time off through the system so the manager can see and approve or deny the specific time requested. Employers are also able to select from a variety of options that best fits their company’s PTO needs.
In addition, employees can see their PTO hours so they are aware how much they have to use for vacation, sick day, personal day, etc. OTC generally helps in eliminating the headache of manually adding up employee paid time off hours by automatically doing it for you.
2) About 70 percent of U.S. workers are disengaged from their workday (Gallup).
This survey conducted by Gallup suggests that employee disengagement from work is caused by such things as the usage of smartphones, emails and social media - all of which lower productivity.
This is barely a surprise if you ask me.
As far back as 2003, a study showed that emails literally “hurt more than pot” in that the IQ of those who tried to juggle between them and work fell by 10 points (the equivalent to missing a whole night's sleep and worse than the effect of smoking marijuana). The average worker is reported to spend 13 hours a week on emails, and 96% of workers claim that unnecessary emails waste their time. Email overload is even costing organizations billions.
Social media, on the other hand, has been strengthening its position as a great killer of productivity. A survey by CareerBuilder.com showed that out of 44% of employees who blamed the internet for killing their productivity, 36% said social media ALWAYS impedes their workflow. This may be the norm for a long time to come, considering that social media usage is expected to continue growing at an exponential rate. Already, computation of data derived from Statista shows that the number of social media users has grown by a staggering 153% from 2010 to 2017.
Universal Class suggests that a good way to ensure productivity, come what may, is to engage in proper time management. It believes that accurate measurements will reveal how much time is spent on accomplishing work duties and how much time is lost. Again, you should look towards OnTheClock for these.
3) Up to 10 minutes per day, per employee, is lost due to tardiness, long lunches and early departure (American Payroll Association).
By not providing measures to keep employees accountable for their use of time while on the job, you’re indirectly laying the grounds for loss of productivity and not securing your bottom line.
Take cognizance of the statistic above to calculate how many productive hours you’re probably losing per day.
Whether the calculated lost time is little or much, you’d most likely be needing a high-end time-tracking software like OnTheClock in the long run.
4) Employees who believe their workplace effectively uses mobile tech are more creative, satisfied, and productive at work (Economic Unit).
If you’re used to using mobile apps or hearing about responsive web design and progressive web apps, then you’re in tune with the fact that mobile is increasingly becoming the future. The above statistic helps to corroborate this point.
The survey conducted by the Economic Unit highlighted the relevance of mobile technology to business operations. It suggests that mobile technology presents chief information officers (CIOs) with an opportunity to improve their business performance by shaping their organization’s employee experience which was critical to their own performance and productivity. It also reported that respondents who described their employers as mobile “pioneers” gave themselves higher scores for every measure of engagement and performance than workers who say their employer’s use of mobile is “bad”.
As an employer, you must acknowledge that employees’ perceptions really matter and must work towards making sure they remain positive. If mobile technology is deemed to be the way to go, then make sure it’s used. The National Business Research Institute also suggests that equipping employees with the right gear is a good way to spur productivity, and all of these make a good case for the adoption of OnTheClock. Check out our mobile time clock.
5) 3 out of 4 Employees in America believe employers don’t give them access to the latest technology to do their job efficiently (Source: Staples).
As stated earlier, employees’ perceptions should never be disregarded. Since the majority of American workers believe they aren’t provided with the latest technology, you should ensure your own employees are comfortable with the technology stack utilized in your organization.
If possible, critical business operations should make use of the appropriate technologies. It’s all about using the right tools for the job.
6) The average employee steals 4 hours and 5 minutes every week (Source: American Payroll Association)
There are many ways to increase your bottom line, but one way to limit your chances of doing so is by not ensuring discipline. The statistic here proves the prevalence of time theft, which, in my opinion, is a kind of indiscipline in organizations.
If you’re serious about your business, then it probably won’t be in your principle to pay employees for work they didn’t do or time they didn’t use for work-related activities.
But how do you prevent time theft?
Simple: by making use of technology that makes its occurrence REALLY difficult. For example, it would be difficult, if not totally impossible, for an employee to break the security measures which OnTheClock offers out of the box. By security measures, I’m talking about what features like GPS Location Tracking aim to achieve.
If you still aren’t sold on the fact that you need to prevent time theft, then I think should also note that it accounts for 2.2 percent of gross payroll losses, some of which you may also incur.
Here is a Ted video by Kerry Goyette, the founder of Aperio Consulting Group.
She talks about how employees are alread motivated, and how to focus their motivations. A great video to watch!
7) Biometric Attendance Can Help Boost Productivity by Preventing Buddy Punching Which is Believed to Cost U.S. companies nearly $400 billion per year in losses.
As stated earlier, discipline is very important to an organization. According to Empxtrack, the aim of discipline is to promote a minimum acceptable behavior by employees. Thus, one doesn’t go wrong in an organization whose environment exudes the sanity that discipline provides. But it’s noteworthy that there exist arrangements that provide the right incentive for acts of indiscipline such as buddy punching.
Buddy punching is simply the process where friendly employees clock in and out on one another’s behalf whenever the need arises. While this is naturally difficult to curtail, it’s noted that manual attendance systems naturally propel its occurrence. This kind of an attendance system is anything but efficient, for it can be easily manipulated. Its usage is therefore considered a veritable way of reducing productivity.
One of the few ways to go about solving this problem is by adopting a more reliable approach to recording attendance. As proven by the statistic above, biometric attendance systems can make buddy punching quite difficult. And OnTheClock comes with this feature alongside others that are meant to provide accuracy and reliability.
8) 96% professionals say employees make mistakes when it comes to time tracking (Replicon).
The above statistic was derived from a survey conducted in 2013 by Replicon on 432 professionals who had the responsibility of tracking the time used by employees.
If anything, the survey showed the problems with traditional time-tracking solutions and how much employees found them challenging.
Therein, it was reported that 87% of respondents reported challenges with time tracking and 32% of solutions were considered as lacking visibility and insight into resource usage.
The only way to make time tracking less challenging is to make it a walk in the park (no-brainer!). Again, OnTheClock should be your go-to software for this purpose.
9) Actively disengaged employees cost the U.S. $450 to $550 billion per year in lost productivity (Source: Gallup)
Time tracking is a good way to ensure employee engagement. Say your organization has a number of remote employees, having them clock in and out with OnTheClock would most likely make them accountable for their use of time and thus keep them engaged.
You don’t want to lose money.
Need I say more?
Also, check out the ultimate guide to workplace statistics.
