Which industries are seeing the greatest gains in productivity worldwide?
Productive working hours by professionals across the world went up in 2024, according to a new report, which revealed concerns about time spent away from workstations.
ProHance's Global Productivity Benchmarking report found that the average hours worked by employees went up from nine hours and 12 minutes in the first quarter of 2023 to nine hours and 30 minutes by the third quarter of 2024.
In the same period, productive hours also climbed from an average of seven hours to seven hours and 30 minutes.
"The increase in productivity is encouraging to see across a broad range of sectors," said Brendan Maree, Vice President and Country Manager for Australia and New Zealand, ProHance, in a statement.
"We can see there is still some room for improvement, however, when it comes to reducing time spent away from workstations."
According to the report, time spent away from workstations was one hour and 42 minutes in the third quarter of 2024, similar to the time recorded in the first quarter of 2023.
Meanwhile, the report also revealed that the healthcare industry logged the highest working hours, with nine hours and 42 minutes, as well as the average number of productive hours, with seven hours and 48 minutes.
The financial services sector came in second, with nine hours and 42 minutes of logged work hours, and seven hours and 24 minutes of productive hours.
Maree said the data shows a "clear link" between the average number of productive hours and the total hours worked.
"The key to achieving improved productivity is focusing on the reasons for the occurrence of idle time during those hours. This is particularly clear in the financial services sector," he said.
The findings come amid the deployment of various AI tools in workplaces that are aimed at taking over some tasks for employees in order to boost productivity.
Previous research unveiled earlier this year found that AI is able to help employees save an average of one hour per workday, with more than a quarter of employees saying they use the saved time to improve their work's quality and carry out creative work.
ProHance's Global Productivity Benchmarking report covered time trends from 2023 and Q1 to Q3 of 2024, using data from more than 197,000 users across 65 organisations globally.
