Does it seem like time slips through your employees’ fingers? When you pass their desks as quitting time draws near and sneak a peek at their work, does it seem like they’ve made little progress since you passed their desks that morning? Kathleen Alessandro, president of the consulting firm Energized Solutions, in Dearborn, Michigan, knows from experience how workday life’s little interruptions can eat away an employee’s time. She suggests these two tips to help your team members get their projects finished, off their desks, and into your in-box.

Unnecessary work meetings can rob you of time you (and others) can be using to actually accomplish things. Sure, communication is important — you need to keep your colleagues in the loop. However, it’s also easy to overdo it. Before you know it, every little thing turns into an occasion for a meeting or conference (possibly with a side of bagels or danish). If the meeting organizers have valuable information for you and your co-workers, that’s fine. But just as often, the meeting ends up being an exercise in aimless chit-chat (to say nothing of overeating) that only drains away valuable time for all concerned. Author Nicole Blades shares six secrets for pruning away unnecessary meetings in Sidestep Pointless Powwows, Part 2 of her January 2009 Women’s Health Magazine article Work Less, Do More. Try the following list of…

E-mail distraction at work is a big problem with employees at most companies. Even the most industrious workers occasionally (or even not so occasionally) take a moment to e-mail friends about weekend plans, or check their Facebook pages, or any number of things. In the January 2009 issue of Women’s Health Magazine, writer Nicole Blades warned in her article Work Less, Do More that while some employees see chilling on the company clock as a worker's right, all those mental breaks and email distractions are costing you.

According to Kathleen Alessandro, president of Michigan consulting firm Energized Solutions, “E-mail pings, phone calls, blogs, IMs, texts, cubicle chitchat, and undefined meetings are taking an enormous chunk out of your plan for a productive day.” Alessandro estimates that the average worker unwittingly wastes about 5.6 hours a day, considering one intrusion occurs every seven minutes and lasts an average of five minutes (including the time it takes to remember what you were doing before the interruption). That adds up to 68 work distractions daily!

Leadership IQ, a Washington, DC-based research and training company, directs one of the largest leadership studies ever conducted.  Their work has appeared in Fortune, Forbes, Business Week, CBS News, ABC’s 20/20, Fox Business News and many more.  The results in this eye-opening article were compiled after the Leadership I.Q. team surveyed 3,611 workers from 291 business and healthcare organizations. 

New Study: Managers Are Ignoring Their Employees