The 10 Productivity Problems Your Company Is Ignoring

Bottoms Up Heads Down

What makes your company less productive?

Chances are, your employees know the answer to this one.

They are quick to respond with issues like endless meetings, overflowing email, and more.

And yet management wonders why work isn’t getting done.

Is your company ignoring productivity problems in the workplace?

Looking the Other Way

Most companies know the issues that are impacting employee productivity. (Or at least they claim to…)

Yet, they continue to self-inflict productivity obstacles in the workplace.

“Most companies ignore the workplace productivity problems that are right in front of them.” (Tweet this Quote)

Is your company choosing to look the other way from the issues?

Here are the Top 10 Productivity Problems that Your Company Is Ignoring:

  1. Meetings Free-For-All – Meetings are the biggest time waster in many companies. Anyone can call one. They are too long. Most have no agendas. Nor is there any follow-up. Most companies would be better off without them.
  2. Email Chaos – Do your employees live in their inboxes? Do they spend the majority of their day shuffling through email? The email game has become the modern age version of “paper pushing.” Send enough emails and people will assume that you are getting work done. (See #5)
  3. No Deadlines – Are deadlines more like “guidelines” in your workplace? Project extensions are the norm. Nothing is really delivered on time. And there are no repercussions for late work.
  4. No Work-Life Boundaries – Do your employees know where their job ends and their life begins? If not, they will endure unneeded stress, interruptions, eventual burn-out. To make this worse, many companies recognize those who sacrifice their personal life, even if it destroys them.
  5. Rewarding Busyness Instead of Productivity – Many companies reward busyness. Why? Because it is easy. It is simple to reward movement, busyness, even commotion. It takes actual effort to determine who is actually having an impact and delivering value to the business. (Note: This requires leadership…)
  6. Accepted Lateness – Meetings are expected to start late. The 9AM meeting becomes known as the 920 meeting. (Because that is when it actually starts…) People don’t give a second thought to those that traipse in 10, 20, or 40 minutes late to a meeting.
  7. Work EnvironmentWhere your employees work great impacts their ability to get work done. Too many companies ignore this. Noise, clutter, inadequate facilities. All of these reduce your team’s effectiveness.
  8. Misguided Policies – Senior leadership (and HR) loves to implement policies without regard as to the productivity impacts they create. No offices. No closed door policies, etc. One company I worked with eliminated all offices to encourage team unity. Within 3 months, no one could get any work done because they were all over each other. Team members couldn’t even hold a conversation because they had eliminated all the office walls.
  9. Restrictive Tech – Technology is supposed to be a work enabler. It is supposed to allow workers to get more done, not to hinder them. Yet, many companies continue to struggle with technology. Needless restrictions. Inadequate tools. And simply non-working systems.
  10. Rework – “If you don’t do it right the first time, you will end up doing it over.” This applies from the smallest status update to multi-million dollar corporate projects. Unfortunately, many companies do not learn this until after spending the millions.

Stop Ignoring the Productivity Issues

Instead of continuing to ignore the productivity issues in your company, tackle them head on.

Don’t be afraid to challenge the status quo. (Because often it is not working…)

Stop doing the things that are sapping your team’s ability to get their work done.

Enable your employees with common sense and a work environment that allows them to actually work.

Question: What productivity problems is your company ignoring?

10 thoughts on “The 10 Productivity Problems Your Company Is Ignoring

  1. You’re missing the red tape aspect here. A couple of years back, my employer actually went as far as to develop a process document detailing how to develop process documents.

    Oh the fun I had with that… “Nope, sorry, can’t do x, because you’ve clearly not followed Process of Processes, and this process document telling me how to do x is invalid. I signed off on Process of Processes, so I’d be in breach of that if I accepted this document.” I single-handedly got that document scrapped in about a month. During that time, we also had a policy document detailing that we had to call the office if we were going to be late. So one day I did call the office, to tell them that I’d come across an RTA on the way to the office, and I was stopping to help out. I got to the office 2 mins late for work, and despite giving them notice I would be late, got a disciplinary! I told the manager where he could shove that piece of paper.

    Things have improved dramatically though.

  2. As a college student, we call 8 pm meetings but know it won’t start until 8:30. Nowadays, when I want a 8 pm meeting, I call it for 7:30. 😉

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