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The Thieves in Your Office
If you saw someone in your office grab a pile of $100 bills from the petty cash drawer and light it on fire, you’d call the cops, right?
Yet people are robbing you all day, every day.
And your employees/team members are robbing each other.
And you are letting them get away with it!
On average, we are interrupted every 3 minutes by digital or human factors. What’s worse is it takes several minutes to regain concentration and focus.
See anything wrong with that math?
It’s likely we are never concentrating or in a state of focus!
To give you a sobering wake-up call, calculate your hourly rate and what it is worth in 5-minute increments. Then calculate the cost of every distraction and take that amount out of your wallet—every time you are distracted.
Distractions not only cause massive losses in productivity, but they also increase stress and decrease motivation. Even short interruptions can have a huge effect on one’s ability to complete a task.
Here are four thieves in your office to watch out for and how to stop them:
- The Door Knocking Thief: Favorite line of this thief is, “Hey, you got a minute?” and then stays for 15 minutes talking about the weather, sports or other whines, moans and groans.Stop Thief! Shut your door. Put a sign on your door notifying the time you will be available next so people don’t freak out thinking you are never emerging again.
- The Chair Thief: Have a chair in your office? If so, it’s an invitation for anyone to walk in and plop down. Once they have, extracting them becomes difficult.Stop Thief! Remove all chairs. (I do not have one in my office.) And when someone enters my office I stand up (subtle indication that this will be brief). If they stay too long I start walking out of my office (less subtle indication that this meeting is over).
- The Meeting Thief: Are you invited to meetings that you don’t need to attend? Constant meetings can suck the life out a business and cause you to lose valuable time that could be spent on your projects.Stop Thief! Be selective in the meetings you attend. Check the agenda; if you see an item that needs your input, agree to attend the meeting for only that item.
- The Phone Thief: Ever been on a conference call that goes on and on and on? Painful, right?Stop Thief! Dictate when you have a “hard out” and the set amount of time you are available for the call and stick to it.
Distractions cost you and your family’s lifestyle tens of thousands of dollars a year. You might need to enact martial law in your office to stop the time thieves from robbing you of your better and more prosperous future.
If you have any questions or need any help finding great office staff make the one call that will handle it all 800-472-9060 or email me at Brian@hcrcstaffing.com.
Brian Torchin