Workplace Productivity

 

Workplace Productivity 

Here's a tip on workplace productivity I was doing some research recently on employees who are working out of their home offices there's certainly a lot more of them than there used to be so I wanted to find out what kinds of advice was being given to people who are setting up their home offices.

                                                                                                                                            I went through dozens of articles to gather up all the tips and five major themes came to light one of those themes was about having a healthy lifestyle while you're working out of your home office so the tips talked about taking regular breaks getting exercise and eating well and having a positive attitude it struck me that that kind of strategies is fairly straightforward to put in place.

                                                                                                                                       when you're working out of your home office so eating well, for instance, there's always a refrigerator close by so you can get the snacks you want taking breaks well there's always a pet or a spouse or a child that's looking for your attention so you're going to get lots of breaks and exercise it's easy to go out and go for a run any time during the day and get lots of exercises.

                                                                                                                                           what struck me though was that we don't always recommend those kinds of health strategies in the workplace and people just aren't getting the time for those things so how do we know this well we've been conducting time studies since 1990 employees use our user-friendly time quarter devices to track their own time and then we show organizations how they can spend more time on their top priority activities so one of the activities we measure is lunch and breaks and personal time while in the workplace it turns out that's only about 3.3 hours per week that's just less than 40 minutes a day not a whole lot of time now in comparison people working out of their home offices.

                                                                                                                                           we looked at independent consultants for instance and they spend a lot of their time in their home offices they were getting 4.6 hours per week for personal time and breaks so it looks like people working out of their home offices are getting that time but people in the workplace aren't so what we need to do is apply those same healthy strategies to the workplace and you can start by doing that on your taking breaks, for instance, you need to take a break now and then get up walk around chat with someone else in the workplace take it takes you away from the tedium of working straight through eating well well you should have a good breakfast have a good lunch don't rush through lunch scrambling to eat something at your desk or having a quick coffee and a donut eat well so that you can have the energy you need to sustain yourself throughout the day and getting exercise.

                                                                                                                                           well, you can't always go for a run at lunchtime but for sure get the exercise you need before the start of the workday or when you get home at the end of the day that will keep you healthy and advocate for that kind of health strategies in your workplace then you can stay productive and then you can spend your time on what matters most.