Survey Finds Knowledge Workers at Small & Mid-Size Firms Spend Half of Workday On Essential, But Unproductive Tasks

Fonality, a business communications company, released the findings of the “2011 Report on UC and Cloud-based Services for SMBs” conducted by Webtorials. The study examined the productivity and communications challenges of small and mid-size businesses (SMBs). Findings revealed that Knowledge Workers at SMBs spend 50 percent of their work day on necessary, yet unproductive tasks, including routine communications and filtering incoming information and correspondence.

The comprehensive report offered other points of interest including:

-- Knowledge Workers are among the largest staff component in a typical SMB

-- SMB Knowledge Workers spend an estimated 36 percent of their time trying to:

- Contact customers, partners or colleagues

- Find information

- Schedule a meeting

-- Approximately 14 percent of SMB Knowledge Workers’ time is spent:

- Duplicating information (e.g. forwarding e-mails or phone calls to confirm if fax/e-mail/text message was received)

- Managing unwanted communications (e.g. spam e-mails or unsolicited time-wasting phone calls)

The study concludes that Unified Communications, especially cloud-based with its lower total cost of ownership, could eliminate much of this productivity shortfall. For example, efficiencies created by Unified Communications on a typical firm with 50 Knowledge Workers with salaries ranging from $40,000 to $110,000 can recover two-hours a day in productivity. The corresponding dollar amount of this time savings is valued at approximately $950,000 annually.

More information on knowledge workers can be found at www.SupportIndustry.com.