Humans Found to be Generally Unproductive

By Brice Dunwoodie | Published Mar 16, 2005

A recent survey conducted by Microsoft corp finds that workers average only three productive days per week and lays the blame on among other things, unproductive staff meetings.

69% of the 38,000 people surveyed considered meetings to be an unproductive use of time. A shocking finding indeed!

The Microsoft Office Personal Productivity Challenge (PPC), which drew responses from more than 38,000 people in 200 countries, rated workers' individual productivity based on their responses to 18 statements about work-related practices.

Survey participants revealed some interesting conclusions about the nature of productivity in their workplace, including these (U.S. findings are in parentheses):

People work an average of 45 hours a week; they consider about 17 of those hours to be unproductive (U.S.: 45 hours a week; 16 hours are considered unproductive).
More than half the participants, 55 percent, said they relate their productivity directly to their software (U.S.: 61 percent).
People spend 5.6 hours each week in meetings; 69 percent feel meetings aren't productive (U.S.: 5.5 hours; 71 percent feel meetings aren't productive).
Only 34 percent said they are using proven scheduling tools and techniques to help them gain more free time and balance in their lives. Likewise, 60 percent said they don't have work-life balance, and being unproductive contributes to this feeling. (U.S.: 31 percent said they are using proven scheduling tools and techniques; 66 percent said they don't have work-life balance.)
Women had an average productivity score of 72 percent, compared with 71 percent for men (U.S.: women, 70 percent; men, 68 percent).
Workers said they receive an average of 42 e-mail messages per day (U.S.: 56).
The most common productivity pitfalls are unclear objectives, lack of team communication and ineffective meetings — chosen by 32 percent of respondents overall — followed by unclear priorities at 31 percent and procrastination at 29 percent (U.S.: procrastination, 42 percent; lack of team communication, 39 percent; ineffective meetings, 34 percent).

“It's exciting to see that so many people around the world took the Personal Productivity Challenge and shared their feedback about the productivity issues they're facing today in the new world of work,” said Chris Capossela, corporate vice president for the Information Worker Product Management Group at Microsoft. “With so many people saying they aren't as productive as they could be and that they rely on technology to achieve their productivity goals, Microsoft has a great opportunity to provide the tools to help them quickly and effectively meet their needs.”

That's fantastic.

The findings for the survey were collected in 29 languages from participants in the Microsoft Office Personal Productivity Challenge via their local Microsoft Office Experience Web sites from September 2004 through January 2005. Survey results were evaluated by ConStat Inc., an independent research analysis firm. The firm evaluated responses from 38,112 participants worldwide.

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