IT downtime costing more than firms realise

UK businesses are failing to notice a “massive loss in productivity” caused by IT at the desktop level. On average, employees spend 1 hour 23 minutes each day trying to fix IT issues in the workplace. This is the key apparent finding of a survey by systems integrator WTL, which telephoned non-IT employees to extract its data. The firm suggests that the downtime could be costing companies millions of pounds in lost productivity. 51% of the people surveyed said they spend time sorting out failed IT; 23% said they spend more than a quarter of their time fixing IT issues and 9% said they spend all of their time sorting out systems. WTL points out that IT has a bearing on almost every aspect of office jobs. “This has got to be a worrying sign for all bosses, as the survey was targeted at those, whose jobs are supposed to be not IT related… [But] if their computer breaks down, they feel they’ve got to have a go at fixing it.” WTL commissioned the survey to investigate the IT issues facing non-IT people in the workplace. 21% of employees rely on manuals or guessing, to fix the problems; 23% rely on their experience; 56% phone technical support. WTL managing director Colin Higgins says: “These findings give cause for concern. We know that people do spend time fixing their computers when they fail but we did not anticipate the overwhelming results our survey has shown. This loss of productivity must be impacting companies bottom line significantly; and there are alternative solutions out there”. He suggests his firm’s own Small Office Solution.