NEWS
14.2M WORKING DAYS LOST TO MULTITASKING EVERY YEAR IN SOCIAL CARE
SECTOR More than 14.2 million working days every year in the social care sector are lost to interruptions caused by the demands of multitasking, according to Randstad Care.
In a comprehensive poll of social care employees, the specialist recruitment agency found that workers were interrupted from a key task by other distractions an average of six times a day. With workers then estimating it took them five minutes to regain their initial momentum after each distraction, the total time wasted each day per individual was 32 minutes.
With an estimated 1.23 million people working full time in the social care sector, working approximately 253 days a year, this means that more than 14.2 million days a year are wasted – the equivalent of 11.6 days per employee.
Victoria Short, MD of Randstad Care, said: “Many jobs require employees to multitask effectively in their roles, but employers and employees alike probably underestimate the productivity implications of constantly switching between tasks. When workers are distracted from what they are doing by an interruption they estimate that it takes them five minutes to get back into the swing of what they were doing beforehand.
“Previous research actually indicates that these estimates are conservative and that the real figure is actually closer to 20 minutes, so the headline figure of 14.2m working days lost every year could actually be on the conservative side.”
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The ability to multitask has long been an integral requirement of social care work, but it is becoming an increasingly time-consuming component. Almost two-thirds of survey respondents said that interruptions to their core activities are more common than they were two or three years ago.
Despite this rise, social care workers aren’t necessarily adapting the way they go about their daily business to cater for these demands. Just over a third have taken proactive steps to counteract the sometimes pervasive nature of multitasking by changing their environment and removing potential distractions, meaning almost two-thirds have no such strategy in place. However, social care workers proved one of the most adept sectors at clustering similar activities together, meaning that the ‘ramp-up-time’ switching between different types of tasks is kept to a minimum. More than two-
thirds of respondents claimed to do this effectively.
Victoria added: “Social care workers often aren’t susceptible to the distractions that blight office workers such as emails, texts or surfing the internet, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t switching between tasks or facing other interferences that can waylay them from the task at hand.
“Love it or loathe it, multitasking is a necessary part of our professional lives and the individuals that prove most adept at it are the ones that embrace it and make allowances in their schedule. Many social care workers are attracted to the profession by the variety it offers and the fact that no two days are the same, which means that multitasking comes naturally to many who work in the sector. The need for multitasking in one’s professional arsenal is only like to increase, so those considering a career in care should bear this in mind and tailor their skillsets accordingly.”
www.tomorrowscare.co.uk
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