Mopria Alliance survey shows that employees experience roughly one distraction every 31 minutes, with working parents even more disproportionately affected.
A new survey conducted by Mopria Alliance, a global non-profit organisation providing universal standards and solutions for print and scan, shows that employees experience an average of 77 distractions per week or roughly one distraction every 31 minutes. For most workers, these distractions negatively impact work and productivity and increase stress, regardless of whether they are working from home or at their office.
Overall, Mopria’s workplace distractions survey found that the top distractions that both workfrom-home and in-office employees face are personal communications such as text or chat, checking personal email or surfing the web, and unplanned conversations. The population most affected by these distractions are working parents living with children at home. The survey found that working parents face a distraction every 25 minutes during their workday, which is 37% more than their non-parental peers. Specifically, parents that work from home face about 10% more distractions than in-office parents and nearly 50% more distractions than non-parents who are working from home.
“Aligning with external research, our findings indicate that parenting and working have become significantly harder during COVID due to increased distractions faced by working parents.” Said Phil Mazzilli, Marketing Chair for the Mopria Alliance. “Almost half of all parents are consciously working additional hours to compensate for the need to handle more personal and family matters during working hours. This leads to parents feeling less connected and more isolated, less confident about their work, and more burnout among peers.”
Moreover, workplace distractions are creating toxic challenges for all employees. The survey found that 37% of employees are working extra hours to make up for distractions. 46% of employees said they take longer to complete work and get less done. The survey also found that, on average, employees spend 11.1 hours in meetings per week, but nearly half of all meetings are deemed unproductive to an employee’s core tasks.
“These findings may have significant implications as employers make decisions on employees returning to the office,” continued Mazzilli. “Employers should consider who their employees are, what distractions exist in their specific working environments, and what solutions they can provide to employees to overcome distractions either at home or in the office.”
The workplace distractions survey found that 78% of workers believe that the ability to easily print and scan helps them to overcome distractions, and 80% of parents would be more productive with printed activities to entertain or educate their kids. This suggests that access to print and scan solutions could help mitigate the effect of toxic distractions and perhaps even help them focus better.
