I have a confession to make on behalf of all corporate workers around the world. (I was one of them for about 8 years so I can speak with some authority to this issue.)
It’s something that the vast majority of corporate office workers would never admit because they’d be ratting themselves out.
It’s something that managers either ignore because it’s the expected cultural norm, they’re angry because they see it but don’t want to be the bad guy, or they are completely unaware of it because workers hide it pretty darn well.
Here it is…
Office Workers Waste Time.
The average office worker loses 86 minutes a day to distractions. In a recent survey, 70% of employees are distracted at work.
Let me let you in on a little secret. This is a typical day from an anonymous 9-5 office worker:
- 9:00: Get in the office and shoot the breeze with cubicle mates. (15 minutes)
- 9:15: Go make a cup of coffee in the break room. (10 minutes)
- 9:25: Check email
- 9:30: Check Facebook (20 minutes)
- 9:50: Go to the bathroom, stop for a conversation. (10 minutes)
- 10:00: Actually do some work (1 hour)
- 11:00: Take a break, check social media, strike up a conversation with cube mates (20 minutes)
- 11:20: Look up local Yelp reviews to choose a new restaurant, ask cube mates their opinion, send an email invite to the department (15 minutes)
- 11:45: Reply to an email before lunch. (5 minutes)
- 11:50: Talk to cube mates about lunch and talk about carpool (10 minutes)
- 12:00: Leave for lunch
- 1:15: Return from “1-hour lunch”
I promise you, I’m not exaggerating. If you’re rolling your eyes because you haven’t experienced this, then you’re not at a typical office or you’re one of the few workers who actually get more than a couple hours of work done per day. Or you’re in denial.
Expectations of most corporate workers are extremely low for a number of reasons. The general thought for most office workers is: as long as I keep checking my email, looking busy, and get at least one thing done today that looks good on paper, it’s a good day.
As long as there’s progress or at least maintenance, all is well.
In the example above, they would be getting approximately 3 full hours of work done while getting paid for 8. If an average salary breakdown is $25/hour, you’re paying your worker $200/day when they actually worked $75-worth.
You don’t need to be a CFO to see that this is hurting your company.
Office Workers Play it Safe
One of the reasons most office workers play it safe is because they get away with working 3 hours in an 8-hour day! Why would you work harder if the bare minimum keeps you safe in the company? This is part of the modern day office culture.
As Steven Covey teaches, Be Proactive, right? Except, if you’re proactive in a standard office environment that doesn’t value constant improvement (most companies I’ve witnessed), you’re probably about to step on somebody’s toes and ruffle some feathers. Trust me, I’m annoyingly proactive and oftentimes ruffled the wrong feathers.
Look, there’s a reason people call it a “cushy desk job.” It’s generally a safe way to make a living if you follow the Japanese proverb, “The nail that sticks out gets hammered down.”
I remember the first couple of weeks I was at a new office job, I went over to the company’s coffee shop/cafe and the wi-fi was down. I went over again a couple days later and it was still down. I filled out an IT ticket saying that it needed to be fixed. That caused the head of IT to speak to my boss about how new people aren’t going to tell a department what to do.
It’s not just the workers’ fault. Ego, fear, and pride from the wrong people in leadership can cause an entire company to play it safe and waste time.
Smart Leaders Hire Out
Despite the current-day issues with office culture, there are many positions in your company that make sense to keep in-house. A multi-million dollar organization probably won’t hire a freelance accounts payable and receivable or C-level management, right? Of course not.
But I bring this office culture issue up to bring home a point that sometimes outsourcing the right campaigns, projects, and tasks is significantly more profitable than hiring in-house.
If you pay your in-house creative and marketing team hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars, per year, and 50% of that goes to getting paid to scroll Facebook and engage in office chat, why wouldn’t hiring a company like GrowFly for a fraction of the cost make more sense?
We’ve Got Something to Prove
As a CEO, CMO, business owner, creative director, or marketing manager, you’ve risen to your position for a reason. You work hard and take risks. You’re probably frustrated at the idea of using up your marketing budget to put warm bodies in the seats with so little return.
Hire a creative, marketing, or technical team that works as hard as you do! We intentionally have these three types of services because:
- Every great company has a great creative, marketing, and technical team
- They’re easy to outsource
- They’re outrageously expensive departments to have in-house
- They’re departments that continually require innovation and an outside perspective
Outsourcing to GrowFly means we also have something to prove. We know that unless we put our money where our mouth is every single time we work with you, you’ll likely find another company to take over. This drives us to provide excellence around every turn.
We also have no skin in the cultural and political game in your company either. You don’t pay for our insurance, for our smoke breaks, for our unemployment, or providing a physical building and lovely environment for us to sit. There’s no fear. There’s no ego. There’s just our team helping your company achieve more than you could ever do in-house. There’s just success.
We Can Help Your Culture
Now that you see why outsourcing makes more sense in these three departments, you still have a problem on your hands: everyone that’s left that is stuck in the modern-day office passivity.
We don’t have any desire to be your accounts receivable, your administrative assistants, or your mailroom manager because we are specialized in our excellence.
We do, however, want to help you make your company more and more efficient because efficiency results in more revenue. More revenue means more budget for advertising, and more advertising means exponentially more revenue.
No matter what your company size, we can help change your company culture. With customized and personal classes like Goal-Setting and Implementation, Building Your Company’s Culture, or a completely customized class specifically for your corporate challenges, we’ve got the expertise to help you become an even better leader than you already are, with a team that’s efficient, happy, and productive.
Send us a message and we’ll get to work!
