Hold it! Workfront Survey Finds Office Workers are Skipping Bathroom Breaks to Meet a Deadline

SILICON SLOPES, Utah, Dec. 8, 2015 /PRNewswire/ -- A survey released last month by Workfront, the leading provider of cloud-based Enterprise Work Management solutions, and conducted online in July 2015 by Harris Poll among more than 600 employed adults who work at a company with 500 or more employees and work on a computer and collaborate with other people ("office workers"), found that the majority of office workers (52%) admit to delaying going to the bathroom to meet a deadline.

One reason surrounding the challenges of finding time for "essentials" is that office workers find themselves too busy doing other non-essential tasks. The vast majority (89%) of office workers say one or more factors get in the way of them doing their work. In fact, office workers state that less than half (45.7%) of their workweek is actually spent performing the duties of their primary job. Top offenders are "wasteful" meetings (57%), excessive emails (40%), unexpected phone calls (37%), and excessive oversight (35%).

In addition to not being able to focus on their "real work", 82% of office workers state they log into work/work email before or after standard business hours, with more than half (52%) doing so every day during a typical workweek. Nearly three-fourths (72%) log into work/work email on the weekend, with 39% doing so every weekend.

The survey shows that of those who work outside standard business hours, they do so primarily to get ahead of their work (52%) or because they feel they have too much work to do (39%). A quarter (25%) of workers feel that it is expected at their company.

"It isn't a secret that many companies expect employees to do more with fewer resources," said Joe Staples, chief marketing officer at Workfront. "Although employees can't always control the amount of work coming in, they can definitely utilize technology to improve work efficiency. By implementing work management tools, like Workfront, workers have a single tool that allows complete visibility and a single source of truth into the work being done and eliminates the need for unnecessary status meetings or digging through an endless chain of emails for the status on a project." 

While the picture looks bleak, not all is bad in the world of work. Although office workers may delay bathroom breaks and spend more time in meetings than necessary, the lunch "hour" still lives on with 76% of workers stating they take a half hour or more for lunch.  Also, most office workers feel that technology helps to improve productivity. More than 9 in 10 office workers who access work information from anywhere (94%) say it has a positive impact on productivity, as do roughly 8 in 10 of those who use mobile devices (82%) or project management software (79%).

Workfront helps enterprise teams stay productive by managing the full lifecycle of work, from initial request, prioritization, and planning through coordination, delivery, and measurement into a single tool. By providing a single source of truth, teams are able to collaborate in the context of work, and gain complete visibility into the work that is being done. This eliminates the need for unnecessary status meetings and gives teams time back to be more productive.

To view the full report and to learn more about Workfront, visit: http://www.workfront.com/stateofwork2015.

Survey Methodology

The survey was conducted online within the United States by Harris Poll on behalf of Workfront from July 6-24, 2015 among 617 U.S. adults ages 18 and older, employed full-time or part-time, who work at a company with 500 or more employees and who work on a computer and collaborate with other people.

For a complete survey methodology, including weighting variables, please contact Shelbi Gomez at [email protected].

About Workfront

Workfront is a cloud-based Enterprise Work Management solution that helps marketing, IT, and other enterprise teams conquer the chaos of excessive email, redundant status meetings, and disconnected tools. Unlike other tools, Workfront Enterprise Work Cloud is a centralized, easy-to-adopt solution for managing and collaborating on all types of work through the entire work lifecycle, which improves team productivity and executive visibility. Workfront is trusted by thousands of global enterprises, like Cars.com, Cisco Systems, Comcast, iProspect, Schneider Electric, and Trek. To learn more, visit www.workfront.com or follow us on Twitter @Workfront_Inc.

Contact: Shelbi Gomez
[email protected] 
801-477-9813

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SOURCE Workfront

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