We’ve highlighted before how much businesses are struggling to work smarter in an age that demands them to do more with less. Our Chaos Theory research outlined the multiple productivity challenges that managers are facing in their day to day jobs: stress, complex internal processes, and taking on tasks outside their main role, to name just a few. These inefficient ways of working take a toll on the business and the research revealed that it’s costing them almost three hours a week. That equates to more than 20 working days a year, about three weeks’ worth.
Those results were taken from a survey of 200 project managers each from European countries including Sweden, Norway, Denmark, the UK, Germany and the Netherlands. Clearly chaos reigns in Europe.
However, when we asked the same questions to project managers in the US, the insights were stunning. Survey respondents in the US believe they waste more than seven hours per week per person of productivity time because of collaboration issues, adding up to 350 hours, or nearly nine weeks per year. That’s more than twice the wasted time than their European counterparts!
What are the factors that are influencing US workers to believe that their workplaces are the most chaotic of all? One major factor could be that US managers are using a lot of tools (an average of four) that are actually hindering rather than helping them.
Nearly half (48%) of respondents believe they are using specialized collaboration tools, but the majority of these mention “partial” solutions, such as various Google products (e.g., Google Drive), GoToMeeting, Microsoft Project, the “cloud” and SharePoint. In fact, 43% said that they want an all-in-one collaboration solution that provides the functions offered by these stated partial solutions.
The escalating business challenges associated with team collaboration is the main reason behind Planview acquiring Projectplace last year – the US is clearly a market suffering from the pressures of modern working. Times are quickly changing and the “partial” collaboration technologies are failing project teams.
So what should you look for in a collaboration solution, and how can you find the one that actually reduces the productivity issues your company is facing, rather than exacerbate them? We recently held a webinar on just this topic – Project collaboration: moving past the hurdles of your legacy solutions – click on the link to find out how to overcome the technologies that are currently failing your teams.
One more thing. In our mission to get new ways of working and efficient collaboration on the agenda, we’re on the panelpicker for SXSW 2016. Help us spread the word by casting your vote here, it will only take you a second.
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