Difficult to use digital tools cost business dear says new report

More than 200m working hours are lost across the UK’s 43,000 medium-large sized businesses according to new report ‘Modern Worklife’ from design and development agency Sigma.

The company surveyed 500 SMEs and 500 employees from medium-large businesses in a range of sectors about their current working processes and found workers in the UK are struggling to adapt to new digital tools, losing hundreds of hours in productivity in the process. The report finds that the average worker loses 28 minutes every day using digital programmes or tools that they can’t use effectively. For a full-time member of staff, this equates to 9.3 hours per month, or 112 hours per year. Considering there are 43,000 medium-large sized businesses in the UK, with 14,142,000 people employed at these enterprises, this equates to a total of 211,187,200 working days lost. The new report also found that two-thirds (67%) of British workers lose up to 30 minutes every day due to difficult-to-use, inefficient or difficult-to-understand digital tools - with another quarter (26%) losing between 30 minutes to an hour. The research found that on average, UK workers are using four digital tools in their daily working lives, with 6% of workers - almost 2m people - using more than nine. But, it’s not all bad news, 81% of workers feel that digital tools make day-to-day working life better, more productive and more efficient.