🕝 How to lose $468 billion

Hey — welcome to another edition of On The Clock 🕜

Today, I’m thinking about how it would feel to wake up and realise someone had stolen $468 billion from my bank account.

Unfortunately, this…kinda happened. When The Economist studied how much money unproductive workers cost businesses last year — that was the damage bill.

While office workers say face-to-face interruptions are their biggest distraction, remote workers blame household chores and demands from others around them for their lack of focus

Now, before we start rolling our eyes at people getting paid to watch TV while working from home, just look at where workers lose the most time:

138 hours every year are lost to personal activities, but that number is dwarfed by unproductive work tasks like emails, meetings, messages and recovering from distractions. These take up around 431 hours. For those of you playing at home, that’s roughly 11 weeks of the year spent on unproductive tasks.

 There is also one very interesting takeaway buried in the report — flexibility and choice in a work environment play a key role in how well an employee thrives.

The biggest question for me is… why does this takeaway need to be put into a report at all? 🤔

Of course a team member is happier when they have a say over where and how they work, and companies must focus on providing that healthy work-life balance to increase focus without killing productivity👇

Let your team build their own workspace

A productive environment looks different to everyone. A marketing manager (🙋♀️) might be most productive at a coffee shop, but a developer may do their best work at home listening to jazz music.

The best way to get your people to be productive is to give them autonomy over what this environment looks like. Bonus points if you help them create it. At Toggl, we give everyone a (generous) home office budget to help them set up their workspace. They can buy an office chair, table, footrest, table lamp, headphones…heck, they can even buy plants if it helps them get in the zone 👨💻

Figure out where your time goes

Pinpoint what unproductive tasks are draining your team’s time. You might think it’s personal activities, but those weekly meetings and relentless Slack pings can really kill anyone's productivity.

Start with a simple time tracking audit using a tool like Toggl Track (it's free). This will give you an idea of what tasks you and your team spend time on — and whether they are actually productive. 

 At Toggl, we also encourage people to cut out any distractions. We choose async communication over meetings whenever we can, and also have clear rules about how to use Slack:

This 👆 stops me feeling guilty about muting Slack when I dive into deep work mode. 

Accept that your team has a life

Prioritize your team's happiness and encourage them to do activities outside of work to relax and unwind. We have a two-fold approach to this at Toggl: 

🧑💻 We prioritize results over fixed working hours. Everyone has the flexibility to structure their day for optimum productivity and work-life balance. Team members can discuss their ideal working hours with their team and then set a schedule that suits their lives.

🔌 A clear unplug rule. Once the workday is done, our Toggl Handbook tells us to switch off notifications and close any work-related tabs. We work async, so responding to work messages immediately isn't expected.

Look, we're not expecting you to claw back the lost $468 billion. 

Just focus on cutting distractions. Accept that when your team clocks off for the day, they’re off the clock. And empower them to work from the place they feel most productive.

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