Over a third of hours spent at work are unproductive according to UK workers
Encouraging productivity can be a challenging task - especially when you have a remote workforce. You have no way of knowing the details of each employee's working day.
Working from home means that social media sites are tempting to look at - sitting permanently on a tab in the browser.
The 'Global Attitudes to Work' survey released earlier this year surfaced some interesting findings. 6,250 employees in 14 different countries were asked about their working life.
American respondents estimated that their personal productivity was 11 percent higher than their estimate of the average American worker's productivity.
Greeks score themselves low for productivity in terms of number of hours worked per day. Italians rank themselves the least productive. Greeks and Italians also report that they spend the most time on personal social media at work each day.
All other European workers rated themselves as more productive than those in the UK which makes for worrying reading for British business owners and managers.
With the sluggish economy it is really important now, for staff to be as productive as possible within working hours.
With this in mind, technology company UniqueIQ developed IQTimecard to enable a new approach to remote management of the workforce.
Its electronic call monitoring (ECM) application provides real-time information on off-site workforce activity.
Staff can accurately log their arrival and departure times of each shift, allowing for an overview of their working patterns to be seen.
David Lynes, Director of IQTimecard, said, "Productivity has always been a key word for managers and business owners wanting to ensure that their companies are as efficient as possible, especially in this challenging corporate climate.
Encouraging thorough timekeeping however can be a great first step in improving the effectiveness of the workforce, creating a company culture with a positive and efficient attitude towards the working day."
If timekeeping was more thorough, managers could begin to increase the productivity throughout their company.
They could place emphasis on precise time management, and making sure that staff are more likely to be aware of the exacting hours they have within a working day.
Staff should them be able to achieve certain tasks within the time limit.
Productivity levels could soar by helping to plan out a day, and by discouraging both over and under working of allocated hours.
If managed well and not implemented by brute force, workers could even remain motivated using new time planning tools.
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