Worthless Work
May 22nd, 2006 by Grant in: Business
At my old job, I often wondered how much work I actually did that was worthless. There were tasks that I was asked to complete that had very little relevance to my job description, or even took away from performing my job.
As an aerospace engineer, I figured that about 15% of the work I did was actually engineering, another 65% of the work I did was a result of engineering, and 20% was junk work: Work that I did that was neither engineering, or a result of engineering, and did not contribue to either.
I came across an article in the Journal via The Monster Blog dedicated to helping employees cut back on overwork.
Acording to a poll, a number of IBM employees thought 15% of their job duties were unnecessary. When you are asked to perform unnecessary tasks, something else has to give. Let’s face it, there’s only so many hours in the day.
The underlying result is that many employees are working longer hours with less satisfaction. A combination that surely lowers productivity and draws down on the workplace environment.
So it looks like I may not be too far off with my 20% junk work estimate.
What kind of junk work do you do?
Leave comments
Subscribe to Comments
Loading ...
