Are Workplace Distractions Killing Employee Productivity?

Most employees have every intention of staying on top of their workload, but it’s not uncommon for distractions to get in the way. Workplace distractions are killing employee productivity and resulting in productivity losses that cost businesses billions of dollars every year, so your company can really save money if you can get a handle on those distractions. 

What’s Killing Your Employees’ Productivity?

Smartphones are one of the major distractions for employees today.

You might not be too surprised to learn that smartphones are one of the top distractions in the workplace. Your employee’s smartphone offers an instant connection to the entire internet (the internet itself is also commonly listed as a distraction) as well as text messages, gaming apps, and other features. It’s very easy to get sidetracked by a phone notification.

Social media is another commonly listed distraction. An employee might simply intend to scroll through a few recent notifications or respond to a message between tasks, but it’s easy to get caught up and lose track of time. In fact, most social media sites are designed specifically to encourage such time loss. And emails can be a frequent source of distraction as well. Even work-related emails can get a worker off-task if the worker feels that answering or checking emails is more important than other types of work. 

How To Handle Internet-Based Distractions

Before you can figure out how to address productivity loss from these common distractions, you need a way to measure what’s happening, when it’s happening, and who is affected. Employee monitoring software can give you the data that you need to determine who is spending work hours shopping online, who is spending too much time answering text messages, and who needs training to help them prioritize email and other tasks. 

Employees who are distracted at work are not necessarily bad employees, but the distractions do need to be addressed for them to do their best work. It’s likely that some don’t realize how much of their work time is being eaten up by outside activities, or they do realize but are having trouble regaining their focus. With accurate information, you can help these employees perform up to their potential.

Transforming Data into Policy

Stronger social media policies can help your company prevent common workplace distractions. 

Once you have the data from your employee monitoring software, you can use it to help you implement workplace policies that encourage your employees to stay on task. That doesn’t necessarily mean that you need to micromanage their internet use, but you may need to craft a better company social media policy or implement rules about personal smartphone use during working hours. 

In some cases, just knowing that they’re being monitored will help employees exert some more control over their own online behavior. Your employees may not want the company having access to their social media information or Amazon shopping history, and an easy way to prevent that is for the employee to simply refrain from doing non-work related tasks on monitored company computers. 

Employee monitoring software can help you address some of the top distractions in today’s workplaces. For more information about how employee monitoring software can help your business,  Start your free 7-day trial.