• by Ray Schultz , Columnist, August 19, 2019

B2B marketers seeking to reach people in companies should have some idea of what their work habits are. So here goes.

A new study by Google Cloud shows that workers spend 60% of their time on nonsense unrelated to their main job duties. 

For instance, 71% waste time dealing with unnecessary or cancelled meetings. And 69% spend up to an hour a day switching applications. No wonder 58% of all workers  are “too swamped” to see beyond their daily to-do list, the report states.

More to the point, 55% of U.S. employees say excessive emails get in the way of work. Doubtless, many of those are emails, but surely some are marketing or sales messages.

And research show that U.S. workers spend eight hours a week responding to work-related emails when they’re not at work — it’s the burnout express.

At the same time, new hires get access to email and applications “in a slow and piecemeal fashion.” So it may take a while to identify new people from the outside. And once they do have access, they may have to go ”open Office to edit a document, then go to File Explorer to change its name, then open email to send it, then go to WhatsApp to send an audio message, and then schedule a videoconference in Skype,”  says Luciano Nascimento, CTO at a large bank in Brazil.

Within companies, much of this can be alleviated by automation that can reduce manual tasks and help teams collaborate, while integrating seamlessly with third-party software. That’s the pitch in this report.

Workplace automation can have bearing on sales and marketing.

For example, the report reminds us all that to "locate last year’s sales deck or a high-res company logo, you have to navigate complex file structures or scroll through old emails."

How much better it would be if your system instantly brought information forward from “across your organization’s assets”? 

And how liberating if you didn’t have to write “have a great weekend” 50 times every Friday.

Also, a company can streamline meetings by inviting people to weigh in by email or shared documents prior to the event. Or, they can skip the meetings entirely via group messages, email threads, phone calls or and casual chat.”

Let’s admit it — some also scrap email entirely. For instance, travel company Governors’ Camp traded on-premises email for a cloud-based communications strategy.

The result? The company went from having email disruptions every 10 days to “zero downtime in three years.”

The report also states that firms can reduce employee stress by not sending emails during off hours. “To make it easier, use an email service that lets you schedule delivery in advance.”

And while it may sound obvious, try to stop sending documents back and forth — people are confused by multiple versions. Instead, see to it that people edit one shared version and that “changes are tracked automatically — no email required.”

The takeaway? “This is a call to action to all organizations,” says Maribel Lopez, founder and principal Analyst, Lopez Research LLC.

Lopez concludes,  “You really have to move into creating these adaptable, flexible workplaces and leveraging technology to do that—because if you don’t, your competitors will, and they will be ahead of you.”