According to a new study from UK-based independent business operations consultancy firm Managementors, supervisors in the UK spend more than half their working day on meetings and admin - leaving little time to manage performance.
Data is based on an average working day of seven and a half hours and is taken from interviews with, and observations of the working practices of over 100 supervisors and managers in a range of UK businesses.
The largest amount of time was spent on meetings and doing unspecified tasks - almost three hours every day on average. Nearly one hour and a half was spent on email and admin and almost two hours each day on doing the tasks meant to be carried out by those that report to them. Fifty minutes each day was spent on passive management - dealing with issues that employees require help with.
The research shows how supervisors - across all industries - are spending their working day and how it impacts on productivity. It was found that supervisors spend less than half an hour each day on active management i.e. the planning, strategy and active direction of staff that is so important to productivity and achieving business goals.
David Beggs - Practice Director at Managementors - stated:
“The reality is that supervisors are doing very little active management of employees in the field, and even worse are spending a major portion of their working day on a variety of tasks which, potentially should be done elsewhere in the business. Such tasks do need to be done, but for supervisors to be doing them raises important questions about productivity and what constitutes leadership in modern business.”
When questioned about the time spent by the supervisors, it did not compare with what they actually thought they spent on the tasks. They believed they spent just under two hours and a quarter each day on active management - but stated that ideally they would like to spend 45 minutes longer than that. In reality, they were found to spend only an average of 27 minutes.
The research also covered how management required time to be spent - more on active management and less on administrative tasks. It was felt that supervisors should be spending around 40 per cent of their time on active management each day.
David Beggs commented:
“There’s a clear disconnect between what people think they spend their working day doing and what they actually do. Productivity depends on many things, such as strong leadership and providing clear direction and training to employees, but this is not happening as much as it needs to. People are spending far too long on meetings which have little output, email, admin and even stepping down to carry out the work of the people they are meant to be managing and it’s time for UK businesses to have a hard look at how they operate. There’s a longstanding issue with UK productivity and while some of that can be put down to how productivity is measured, it’s also true that as a collective economy we need to improve our outputs. A good way of starting this process is to look at the role of business leaders and assess how their time can be more productively spent.”
