How many hours per day does the average employee spend in meetings that could be an email? How about responding to chat messages? This infographic provides a breakdown of how employees typically spend their time at work.
It’s estimated that the average person spends a third of their lives at work – the equivalent of 90,000 hours. But how many of those hours are spent on meaningful tasks?
Checking our emails, fixing errors, attending unproductive meetings: these jobs nibble away at our days without providing much in the way of purpose or satisfaction.
But just how extreme are these tasks’ hold on our schedules?
Researchers have recently sought to answer this question through analysis of distractions at work, unpaid overtime and ‘work about work’ – i.e. activities that take time away from meaningful or productive work, such as searching for information, communicating about work and chasing the status of work.
In the infographic below, you can find a full breakdown of the typical work week of an average employee.
Extra resources
Looking for some information to help you manage your time more effectively in 2024? Here are some resources that might help:
- The psychology behind why you find it hard to stop attending unnecessary meetings
- How to host a ‘silent meeting’
- The three different types of meetings that you can host
- How to recover from ‘attention residue’
- Managing workplace distractions
- Minimising ‘work about work’
- Ensure your overtime policy is compliant.
Need help optimising employee productivity? AHRI’s short course will arm you with the strategies your organisation needs to help hybrid teams make the most of their time.
Surely 5.4 hours of unpaid overtime per week, not per day?
This is a useful article and better use of our time is something we’re working on for next year. Just one questions…can you please check the stat on 5.4 hours a day on unpaid over time. Should that be per week?
Great way to rethink and divide the time be wellbeing focussed be wise 🦉 Afterall no one is getting burnt out but you
Yes please check the unpaid time 5.4 hrs / per day or per week ?
An interesting read, but I think if we worked for 8 hours with 1 break every work day, we would surely burn out. Sometimes the emails and distractions give us a mental break. It has the same purpose as standing up and stretching every hour.