When you look at a laptop that might be getting a bit older, and then look at the price tag for a replacement, you may be tempted by thoughts along the lines of, “If it ain’t broke…”
The problem is that older devices don’t need to break to create a drain on your business’ budget. They don’t even need to crash. All they need to do is slow down your employees.
All it takes to slow down your team members is a five-second lag that happens over and over. This is the difference between technology that costs you and technology that empowers you. Every time an employee is forced to stop—even just for a moment—it adds a little to a cumulative financial burden that adds up quick.
Let’s dive into how these little events contribute to some pretty severe productivity burdens hiding in legacy hardware.
Why Does a Computer Lag?
If you’ve ever had a moment where you had to stop and think for a second, that’s effectively what your computer is doing whenever one of these micro-lags occurs. It’s simply the machine going through its processes, having to stop and regroup along the way.
Think about how it takes a few seconds to open a particularly large document or process a larger file, or even switch from your communications app to your browser. They don’t seem excessively disruptive on the surface, so we tend to just wait a few extra moments.
However, let’s crunch the numbers for a moment. The average office worker deals with about 50 to 100 of these lags each day. Let’s say that one such day, we encountered 42 three-second lags, 28 four-second lags, and 35 five-second lags. That’s a total of 6.8 minutes per day, down the drain. On a weekly basis, that’s a half hour gone.
If this pattern held consistently across a 28-person office, that’s a total of 14 hours lost… basically, you’re down one employee for a day and a half. Over a year’s time, you’re losing 87.5 hours… just over two work weeks… just because your technology is lagging.
It Gets Worse: The Computer Isn’t the Only Thing that Takes a Break
So, those two weeks we just calculated were purely based on the technology’s availability (or lack thereof). This is only half of the equation—the user is also impacted by these lags.
Regardless of how disciplined a worker is, their brain will shift when their computer doesn’t cooperate. They’ll get frustrated by the wait, glance at their phones, and try to remember what the plan was for dinner.
In other words, their focus breaks.
Now, consider that a return to deep focus takes an average of 23 minutes after a distraction. This means that for almost half an hour after each lag, your team member isn’t as productive as they could be… and it isn’t their fault, it’s the fact that they keep getting thrown out of deep focus by the tools they have to use.
Over Time, Hardware Starts to Hold Itself Back
As though the aforementioned issues weren’t bad enough, we do need to circle back and address what happens as even the best computing hardware ages.
Let’s say that you last refreshed your team’s hardware back in 2022, four years ago as of this writing. Back then, the laptop workstations you invested in were top-notch. However, four years later, things are a little different.
The long and the short of it is that the internal cooling systems that keep business hardware from overheating and damaging itself don’t last forever, and most users have never opened up a device to remove accumulated dust. So, as insulation builds up inside the device and the thermal paste loses its potency, the processor heats up. The computer then reduces its speed to protect the processor from damage. The result: your team members are stuck using hardware that is actively throttling itself to half of its potential to keep itself safe.
In response, your team tries harder… but since they’re trying harder on a slowly dying device, it isn’t helping much.
We’ll Help Your Business’ Tech Stay Up to Speed
If you’re paying someone to do a job, why equip them with the tools that will only make them less efficient? Nowadays, you need and deserve the technology that will keep you beyond operational and allow you to be competitive. We can help ensure you have that technology.
Find out how COMPANYNAME can help you achieve more by calling PHONENUMBER.