Your Staff Only Work For 3 Hours A Day

Nope, that isn’t April Fool’s clickbait.

A survey of 1,989 UK office workers has found the average employee is only productive for 2 hours and 53 minutes a day, with social media and news websites labelled as the main distractions affecting employee productivity.

Don’t worry, reading this definitely counts as work.

The study by Vouchercloud is eye-opening for business owners, especially when you consider salaries can account for up to 52% of operating budget, according to the Society for Human Resource Management. This can jump up to 80% of gross revenue being spent on employees when you factor in benefits.

Against 3 hours of productivity a day, that doesn’t sound like great value for money!

If you’re shocked at the end of your financial year by the wage bill, it might be worth re-thinking your future hiring plans, because there is an alternative.

The use of a Virtual Assistant is an ‘on demand’ option for those situations where work may only be ad-hoc, affected by seasonality, or dependent on availability of the existing workforce. Rather than hire a new employee as a knee-jerk reaction, Virtual Assistants can take on admin work so existing staff can get on with what they’re good at.

What’s more, with Virtual Assistants you don’t need to worry about arranging a desk or buying equipment (let alone deal with the hassle of managing them). But crucially, you only pay a Virtual Assistant for the work they actually do!

Let’s take a look at the cost of someone on minimum wage as comparison (today, that’s ￡15,269 per year). Taking into consideration recruitment fees, equipment, pension, taxes and bonuses, it’s easy for that to grow by 50% - try for yourself on the true cost of an employee calculator. It makes you wonder what else you could be investing all of that money in…

And yet, despite this huge cost businesses bear, the benefits for employees continue to grow. The Institute of Leadership and Management state that 94% of UK organisations apparently now offer staff some form of flexible working. I wonder how many businesses are as open minded about hiring Virtual Assistants, or freelance alternatives instead of full-time employees?

As a Virtual Assistant at Miss MPS, I help our clients with all their admin; from social media, to mail shots, to appointment bookings. Because they only pay us for the work they do, they don’t have to worry about extra costs such as holiday pay, pensions, sick pay or benefits – they just pay us when they need us.

And if you think this is still an April Fool’s joke, I promise it isn’t!

Could you use an extra pair of hands, but don’t want to commit to employing someone? Then we should talk! Call Miss MPS on 01732 757 870.