Most business owners would like to run their business in an effective, economical and efficient manner to ensure the greatest return on their investment. However, is your business really as productive as you think it is?
- How much time are you and your staff using to do what your business is supposed to do?
- How much time is being wasted on unnecessary tasks, or redoing work because of inadequate training or skills?
- Is all the work you are doing daily in alignment with your goals?
- How is your productivity level impacting your profit?
The ideal model for a productive workday is below:
The ideal is that 90% of your time should be spent on productive work (doing what your business is supposed to do in producing products or services).
10% of your time should cover the necessary administration that makes the productive work possible.
What is the reality? How much of your business time is really being spent doing productive work?
Below is a pie chart depicting what the average USA worker accomplishes in an honest day’s work.(The USA is used here only as an example – there are other countries that fare worse!)
According to this illustration, 65% of a work day is being wasted! This implies:
- wasted manpower
- wasted money
- wasted machines
- etc.
Let us have a look at the wastage. 30% of the day is being spent redoing work (fixing mistakes, etc). This could be, for instance, where a manager insists that the subordinate redoes completed work simply because the manager is not personally satisfied with it. People may also make mistakes because of a lack of skills or knowledge.
Losing sight of the goals of the business is evident in the 35% of resource wastage in doing unnecessary work. If you do not know why you are doing something, stop. Being busy should never be confused with being productive.
You are at your most unproductive when you redo work that should never have been done in the first place!
In the illustration above, only 25% of the work day is spent doing productive work. If you add the necessary administration of 10%, only about a third of the day was used to reach the business objectives.
Keeping the above in mind – how productive is your business?
