‘Pointless’ tasks at work cost you 15 weeks a year

The average employee reckons they waste almost 15 weeks a year – carrying out ‘pointless’ tasks at work, according to research.

The study of 2,000 workers found typically 142 minutes a day – more than two hours – are spent doing admin, paperwork and attending meetings when they could be getting on with more important jobs.

That equates to a staggering 76 working days across a 48 week year, assuming workers take four weeks annual leave.

It also emerged at least 26 minutes of every seven-and-a-half-hour day is spent working out how to use old or failing technology.

A further half an hour is spent attending meetings which could be done in a fraction of the time, while workers try to battle their way through time-consuming conversations with colleagues and clients for another 34 minutes.

And completing mountains of unnecessary paperwork dominates another 29 minutes of the day.

A further 24 minutes is spent on processes such as claiming expenses and manual documentation.

And technology could be to blame for much of the day’s wasted time – with 44 per cent of workers claiming their company’s tech is ‘woefully outdated’.

Adam Reynolds, CEO and spokesman for expense management company Webexpenses, which carried out the study, said: “Activities such as claiming expenses, processing invoices and auditing shouldn’t take much time at all, and yet for many businesses stuck in the dark ages, they are.

“As this study found, workers feel the brunt of a business which isn’t set up efficiently, as they spend hours and hours on tasks which could be done in half the time.

“Workers are understandably frustrated that they are unable to carry out the jobs they are being paid to do, as they are spending too much time on pointless processes.”