Are your employees wasting time on boring, low-value tasks? Could they be using this time more effectively on tasks that help grow your business?

According to Gallup, 84% of employees in Australia are not engaged. 16% are actively disengaged, meaning they’re unproductive and unhappy and likely to spread this negativity around. And 60% lack motivation and are unlikely to invest effort in the outcomes or goals of their companies.

There’s no doubt that disengaged employees are unproductive employees. So what causes these employees to become disengaged in the first place?

Increase Employee Productivity

Boredom

Employees who spend large parts of their day doing mindless, boring tasks like data entry are unlikely to be hugely invested in the outcomes of those tasks. According to a British study, employees are spending an average of 5.3 hours bored at work each week. This means that managers and business owners are failing to give these employees variety, new challenges, or interesting work.

And it’s not just productivity you need to worry about. Bored employees increase churn for your business too. One study found that workers who are bored are twice as likely to leave their job within six months.

Lack of Challenge

Human beings need to be challenged. We’re happiest when engaged in doable (but difficult) activities. These are the types of activities that cause us to become so absorbed in our tasks that it seems like time stands still.

In one study, psychologist Steven Kramer and Harvard professor Teresa Amabile analysed diaries from almost 12,000 work days. They found that the most productive and happiest days were the ones where entries had a sense of progress- often found through so-called ‘small wins.’ For employees, being challenged and meeting new goals instills this sense of progress, helping them to stay happy and productive.

Missing Purpose

A study by PayScale found that factors like how much an employee is paid can only motivate people so far. Instead, the most important factors include whether an individual feels appreciated and their outlook on their company.

According to the study, employees become disengaged and no longer care about their organisation when they don’t feel like the work they’re doing serves a purpose.

When employees can’t see a link between the work they’re doing and their company’s goals, they quickly become disengaged and disinterested. No one likes to feel like a cog in a machine, and business owners need to communicate to employees how their individual tasks contribute to the bigger picture.

Increasing engagement with automated business solutions

It’s easy to see how boredom, lack of challenge, and missing purpose can lead to disengagement, and how disengagement, in turn, leads to loss of productivity. So how can business owners prevent this from happening?

Not only do automated business solutions contribute to the bottom line, but they can be the difference between engaged, enthusiastic, and productive employees and those who are imagining themselves at home on their couch.

While you may assume that automation is about replacing employees, this couldn’t be further from the truth. Instead, automation allows employees to relinquish mind-numbing, low-value tasks that they could do in their sleep. This means they have more time to do important activities that actually move your business forward while giving employees feelings of achievement and fulfillment at work.

90% of employees are doing repetitive, boring tasks that could be automated. These tasks include data collection, administration activities, data processing, and data entry. Businesses lose 19 working days per employee per year just to these tasks alone. Imagine how much further ahead these businesses would be if they were using automated business solutions for these activities.

Humans are uniquely suited for tasks that require reasoning, decision-making, and creative thinking. The more time your employees are spending on mundane activities, the less time available for innovation and growth.

By implementing automated business solutions in your business, you can provide employees with the type of work they find meaningful and challenging. This will increase productivity, lower employee turnover, and help you grow your business- while reducing labor costs.

If you’d like to learn more about automated business solutions for your business, get in touch today.

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