Admin wins out over people skills: study

A new workplace productivity study has found managers devote over a third of their time to admin tasks and only a small amount to supervising and training staff.

According to management-issues, The Global Productivity Report suggests managers spend up to 18.5 per cent of their time undertaking unproductive activities.

When asked about hurdles to productivity respondents said skills shortages, poor communications, red tape, rules and regulations, low morale, staff turnover and their supervisors were all issues.

The survey did uncover some good news. The international study indicates Australian managers spend the least amount of time working on unproductive activities.

Comments

[Don Corleone]

I'm convinced that managers bury themselves in administrative activity because its far easier to be "busy" then it is to deal with the people management, conflicts and issues that arise when managing or leading teams or companies.

[Brad P.]

I agree with Don. People are difficult to deal with. I have started using PersonaVita to help combat this issues. I have people working on a project fill out weekly reports (which take about 15 min) on their contribution to the project. Then These reports are validate by their team members. Part of the validation is the staff member's motivation towards the project. This will send up flags for me to followup. Then I can have direction on where to spend my time with my team and get out from behind the desk.