Middle managers’ wasted time is resulting in almost £2bn being lost in transport and logistics every year, according to YouGov research.
It found that those working in middle management spend an average of 7.9 weeks every year picking up low value or unnecessary tasks, such as emails, pointless meetings and correcting others’ mistakes.
This was the largest amount of time wasted of the five frontline sectors studied and compared to 7.74 weeks in manufacturing, 7.4 weeks in construction and 7.3 weeks in retail.
When taking into account managers’ wages and the size of the UK transport workforce, SafetyCulture, which commissioned the research, said this equated to an estimated £1.9bn lost.
The report found that inefficiencies often lay in the approach by transport leaders to improvement programmes.
For example, more than four in five managers (84%) had ideas that could improve their organisation, but less than half (41%) had actually had these ideas implemented.
The leading reason for ideas being rejected was that “senior leadership aren’t receptive to ideas from managers” (31%).
Instead, transport managers said top-down improvement programmes in their organisation “feel like a senior-level tick-box exercise” and are “driven by people who don’t understand how the work is done”.
Where managers’ ideas were taken forward, they reported positive impacts such as more efficient operations (70%) and reduced costs (46%).
Alex Brooks-Sykes, SafetyCulture’s UK and Ireland site lead, said: “Most transport and logistics managers aren’t set up for success.
“Too many are stuck firefighting daily issues or buried in admin instead of driving efficiency on the road and in the warehouse.
“Managers have a unique vantage point – they know the strategic plans of senior leadership and the realities on the frontline. This makes them a hugely valuable source of business insight, but one that’s often overlooked.”
