• A survey of healthcare workers in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa revealed how slow or non-functioning printers impact productivity.
• Workers lose an estimated 76 days of productivity because of poor performing printers.
• The bad news is that little is being done to address this.

Technology can make or break a business in a number of ways including as regards productivity. While it may make sense to spend less on hardware, if that hardware performs poorly or breaks regularly, it can lead to a major dip in productivity that could harm the business.

Healthcare workers in South Africa lose an estimated 76 days of productivity – that’s cumulative and not 76 days consecutively – thanks to slow or non functioning printers. This is according to Epson which recently researched how poor tech affects employees in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa (EMEA).

On a weekly basis, 31 percent of respondents said they lost 30 minutes of work time because of a slow or non-functioning printer and 19 percent said they lost up to an hour.

These healthcare workers which includes doctors, patient facing practitioners and nurses overwhelmingly – 97 percent – state that this downtime has a negative impact on their work. It makes sharing information, updating records, and making appointments tougher while also courting complaints from patients.

But concerningly, 75 percent of respondents stated that little is being done to address this situation.

“It’s a glaring reality. While some may think printers are just sidelines in the work of healthcare workers facing patients, the truth is far from it. Outdated technology is directly impacting patients, and healthcare professionals are calling for urgent intervention,” says Epson Business Print Sales Manager, Yudheer Harbhajun.

While Epson’s research hones in specifically on printers, poor performing technology is a business productivity killer. Research from 2016 found that workers lost 22 minutes per day dealing with IT issues. Epson’s figures suggest that time spent on IT problems are only getting more complex and causing time wastage.

This tracks what with the complexity of digital solutions. Poor connectivity can make accessing cloud services a chore, VPN’s add security but can become another point of potential failure and that’s before we even mention hardware and how slow businesses are to upgrade their technology.

With Epson’s research in mind then, it may time to take a look at your own business to see how poor technology is impacting it.

[Image – Michal Jarmoluk from Pixabay]