The last 20 months have been trial-by-fire for businesses all over the world — managing work from home (WFH) policies and practices, keeping employees engaged, and generally trying to adapt. The Great Resignation, as it's being called, should probably be called The Great Churn. Workers are empowered to hold out for jobs that offer better benefits, more robust and transparent WFH policies, and that are generally more engaging.
In short, it’s not all about the money.
We just published a new report that covers onboarding, meetings, and email — the first represents a new hire’s introduction to the organization, its people, and core processes. The latter two make up more than half of a given work day. That’s right, more than half. And it’s worse for managers with more than 10 direct reports.
There is a lot of new, exclusive data, some tips on how to improve, and a lot more. You can download the free report here.
According to Gallup, only 20% of employees report that they feel engaged at work, and the same report notes that the highest quit rate has been among disengaged employees. For employers — more specifically, for HR professionals focused on talent retention — this should be a flashing red light. It's also a great opportunity to improve things and beat the market.
Let’s take meetings, a topic we cover extensively in the report. Poor meeting culture has a number of (very treatable) symptoms:
- Too many (irrelevant) meetings
- Too much unpaid overtime; usually in the form of email or replying to DMs
- Not enough "Team Time", especially 1:1 meetings
According to TiL data, it’s the manager class that sees the most strain, especially with regards to meetings. People managing large teams spend a lot of time in meetings, as you can see here:
Imagine how much of this time could be spent doing actual work. If your managers are spending more than half of their time in meetings every single day, there’s simply no way they are able to complete their work during a normal working day.
Combined with email, Slack, and general day-to-day work, it’s not hard to see why people are burnt out and reevaluating how they think about work — and employee engagement is down almost across the board. It’s something we are actively trying to address here at Time is Ltd., and this report breaks down the key components of the average work day.
I hope you read, share, and learn something. Please don’t hesitate to reach out if you’d like to learn more about our research and solutions.