Old PCs and hardware are a major productivity drain for workers everywhere

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Some workers could regain up to six hours a week with new hardware

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Many employees are spending hours every week troubleshooting various problems with their computers and other technology tools, taking a major toll on their productivity, a new report from Intel has found.

Polling 1,000 U.K.-based hybrid employees and IT decision-makers (ITDM) for the report, Intel has found that two in five (43%) of employees spend two to three hours a week fixing IT issues in their productivity applications. Furthermore, a third (33%) spend roughly the same amount of time troubleshooting video conferencing solutions.

Translated into money, that amounts to roughly $3,165 of wasted productivity, per employee, per year, in the UK.

All of these problems, according to almost half of the employees polled, could be solved by upgrading to a more powerful device. A further 37% said that with better gear, they’d be able to recover more than six hours of unproductive time - a week. 

Drilling deeper into the benefits employees expect from new or upgraded devices, Intel has found that 76% of employees and 88% of ITDMs said device connectivity, such as faster Wi-Fi, was of high importance. Furthermore, 66% of employees and 81% of ITDMs would love better video quality for hybrid working devices, while 60% of employees and 63% of ITDMs wanted a thinner, lighter, ultra-portable device.

Employee mental health at stake

Finally, better-performing devices could also have a positive impact on the organization’s cybersecurity posture, as well as employee mental health and wellbeing, it was said. 

While older devices may be prone to various flaws and vulnerabilities, newer machines could be better-protected, out of the box. Also, almost half of the ITDMs surveyed for the report said investing in better laptops would be a good demonstration of their organization’s commitment to employee wellbeing.

Employee burnout, often caused by sluggish, outdated apps and digital tools, is a major concern for most of the organizations nowadays. 

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Sead Fadilpašić

Sead is a seasoned freelance journalist based in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina. He writes about IT (cloud, IoT, 5G, VPN) and cybersecurity (ransomware, data breaches, laws and regulations). In his career, spanning more than a decade, he’s written for numerous media outlets, including Al Jazeera Balkans. He’s also held several modules on content writing for Represent Communications.