Why Time is Money: How you Risk Wasting Both

Benjamin Franklin once wrote, "time is money." 

This statement remains true among many business leaders, yet growing complexities have increased employers' and employees' demands on time. 

Time has become even more scarce due to new data being generated daily, various communication channels and advertisements competing for our attention. 

There is more pressure than ever to use time wisely to streamline operations, maintain a competitive edge, increase productivity, and of course- save money. 

In short, this article discusses how time management has become more difficult in recent years due to the increased demands on time and the proliferation of data. It argues that time management is not always an issue of personal employee productivity but can be an organizational structure issue. It describes how Raffle Workplace Search can help organizations manage their data and improve productivity.

Your Time is being Stolen

The Entrepreneur in 2022 states that the Great Resignation and the global pandemic have displayed that employees value their time and work-life balance more than before.

How we use time needs to change to align with company and employee needs. 

Employers spend their time managing the time of others through constant reminders, meetings, reviews, etc. Yet, this is a waste of time. 

According to McKinsey & Company in 2013, numerous meetings, unnecessary interactions, and busy work interrupt an employee's workflow, causing valuable time to be lost. Limiting the number of interactions may seem a plausible solution, yet communication is necessary for a successful business. Sue Newell in 2015, outlines that communication, at its core, is about sharing knowledge and is vital to organizational success. Knowledge sharing is an overlooked component of Time Management that greatly contributes to employees' productivity allowing work to be completed more accurately.  

A report by McKinsey & Company in 2022 shows that 30% of employees' time is wasted on low-value tasks or busy work. Business News Daily in 2022 quotes that management can assign busy work or be self-assigned to appear productive. We’ve all been there where our manager asks us to re-create a missing document, or maybe you give yourself the task of reorganizing your files. These tasks are impractical and mind-numbing and can jeopardize productivity. 

An old-school course of action in organizations is to address individual employees' productivity. Yet, time management is not always an issue of personal employee productivity nor the manager's ability to control the employee, but it can be an organizational structure issue. Organizations need to automate and digitalize their processes to quickly complete low-value tasks, allowing employees to focus on high-value tasks.

Moreover, McKinsey & Co. in 2017 proved that the digitalization of work processes has led a majority of company knowledge to be stored as digital data. This data is then organized or structured into a system for employees to access quickly. This seems simple enough, but it isn't. The widespread use of technology has increased companies' data and scattered it across various channels, files, hard drives, and resources. Companies' data is becoming increasingly impossible to structure, rendering data unusable for employees. Our previous example of an employee recreating a document is due to the unmanageable amount of data that causes files to go missing as they are scattered across different channels and hard drives. Research from 2019 found that 83% of employees spend time recreating documents because they are unsearchable. 

Company knowledge, time, and money are being lost as employees grabble with organizing large amounts of data. Data is a competitive advantage, but if improperly managed, it strains an enterprise and its employees. Moreover, we can’t keep up. In 2022 alone, an individual creates 1.145 trillion MB of new data daily. If someone visits your website, imagine how much data you could have to analyze for strategic efforts and to organize for it to be optimized. Old software can not support this level of data collection or evaluation. It will fail. 

Prepare for the Future or get Left Behind

Benjamin Franklin once wrote, "time is money." But, I would venture to say that data is time and money. You can’t create more time, but you can stop wasting your time. Good data is only as good as the tool that manages, organizes and structures it. Raffle Workplace Search helps bring value back to your data. 

Raffle Workplace Search connects employees with shared company knowledge or data. Raffle’s advanced AI understands the context of employee searches meaning they can use their own words without fear of misspellings, grammatical issues, or language barriers 9 out of 10 times. 

Forbes in 2019 found that 39% of employees' time is wasted due to a poor search engine.

Raffle Workplace Search doesn’t waste your employee's time. Raffle can find the ‘missing’ documents that the old software couldn’t eliminate low-value tasks. Raffle doesn’t ask you to organize your data, create complex code to maintain your data storehouse, or spend hours analyzing data before it produces any value.  

If you think your employees losing 50% of their week to search is bad, imagine that new hires' productivity level only reaches 25%. New Hires rely on search to find solutions and elevate their shared company knowledge. Raffle Workplace Search cuts onboarding time in half, making new hires more valuable faster by giving them a search that gives accurate solutions instantly. 

Want to see a real-life Use Case on how Raffle decreased onboarding? Read more about Codan.

Moreover, Raffle reduces time spent searching by 96% with our unique machine learning algorithms to increase accuracy and natural language processing to understand the intention that instantly uncovers the right results. 

Marketing Artificial Intelligence (AI) Institute in 2022 found that AI-powered search engines allow for faster search results, better SEO marketing, and higher sales success. Raffle Insights, such as our Knowledge gaps, show you what information your company is missing and offer vital insights that save time and money, giving you a competitive edge. 

A real-life example is found for Visma using the Raffle Workplace Search. Raffle decreased the search time by 96%, enabling Visma to reduce its case-handling time by 56%

Raffle is seamless and quickly integrated on top of your company's existing website or knowledge base with no code or maintenance needed allowing employees to start using the function instantly. It almost seems too easy to be true, but it is true. Check it out for yourself: here

Stop wasting time and money. Simply integrate your existing system with Raffle Workplace Search, so your employees can create high-value work and be supported with company data relevant to their success.

What are you waiting for? Save yourself some time and money….get Raffle Workplace Search.