New research from Brother UK says that the channel could help save small and medium sized businesses across the country around five million working hours every week by fixing everyday IT problems.
The survey of more than 600 business leaders by YouGov, into office productivity, commissioned by Brother, showed that just over a fifth (21 percent) of senior leaders in SME businesses believe that solving printer problems are one of the top things wasting employee time, while 20 percent think computer crashes are hurting their bottom lines.
Brother says that channel firms should put solving SME’s productivity challenges at the heart of how they sell to the sector.
The data shows that 75 percent of business leaders estimate that each of their employees spend one to two hours per week in front of frozen computer screens. Over two thirds (71 percent) thought a similar number of hours were wasted each week by faulty printers.
Other drains on employee productivity identified by the survey are staff not being able to find documents either on a server or as hardcopies (28 percent) and workplace equipment (excluding printers) not working properly (21 percent).
Phil Jones , Managing Director at Brother UK, said: “Productivity is a big issue for ambitious SMEs, and it’s great that so many business leaders see investing in employee training and rewards as key to smarter ways of working. However, such investment can be worthless if staff can’t rely on the office infrastructure and equipment.
“As the survey data shows, millions of hours of employee time are wasted through typical IT errors that many people will be all too familiar with. It is easy to overlook the common issues that have, wrongly, become part of the working day. Fixing these issues can deliver quick and long-term productivity wins that improve staff morale as well as helping the balance sheet. The trick is to preserve a small amount of time to look for the seemingly inconsequential things that waste time.”
A third of leaders said introducing mandatory regular screen breaks would have a positive impact (34 per cent), 16 percent said a change office ergonomics would help and 1 in 10 (11 percent) said they would limit website access.
