On the clock

Abtrac CEO Edward O'Leary says employees spend too much time on personal business during work hours

By Vera Alves, Auckland | Friday, 24 June 2011
It may sound like a sales pitch for his company but Edward O’Leary has the numbers to back up his claim that New Zealand employees are wasting their work days.

According to O’Leary, CEO of time management software company Abtrac, the average kiwi worker could be costing their employer over $14,000 a year in time spent on personal business.

For O’Leary, the tough economic times the country has been facing means that now more than ever, companies are trying to become more efficient to improve their profit margins.

“Our economy needs to be productive and employees must be aware of the importance of their work output and the significant loss of revenue that unproductive company time can have,” he says.

The problem, as O’Leary sees it, is that most employees don’t realise how much they cost their employer.

“To afford someone on a $50,000 salary, a company might need to make $100,000 to cover it. Every day you’re sitting at work, you are costing a lot of money,” says O’Leary.

O’Leary believes businesses should improve their planning and time management.

“I hate sounding like a scrooge. You need a certain amount of mucking-around time at work, but it needs to be managed. There are so many distractions.”

“It’s a cultural thing, the whole perk mentality. Work would be easier if time was better managed,” he adds. It’s hard for O’Leary to get over the bad connotation that time management has, but if a company wants to become more efficient and more competitive, that is a vital step to take.

“We often find that once we make people aware of the importance and cost of their work, significant improvements are registered,” he says. “It is all about striking a balance, providing staff options such as open access to personal internet and phone during their lunch and not ‘locking’ them out completely. Equally by placing limited restrictions on certain internet sites, monitoring emails and letting staff know that their productivity is being evaluated will have an effect.”

“Australians get paid a lot more. They have more of a work ethic. They like their long lunches but when they are at work, they are at work,” he adds.

The emergence of social media is, for the CEO, a conundrum, as it can be both a time waster and a business tool. “We’re dancing around with it.” The rise of online shopping is also to blame, he says, as many purchases are reportedly done during business hours.

O’Leary started his software development career as an consultant in the IT division of Ernst & Young. That was back in the days when PCs started entering the workplace. He moved on and founded his own company in 1990, called Above Board Computer Consulting Limited. “We wrote Abtrac ourselves, for our own internal use. I had 12 staff and no idea what they were doing,” he recalls. “I gave it to my friends and they said it was very good.”

The software is specifically built for professional services businesses such as accountants, technology companies, HR consultants, PR consultants, engineers, architects and designers, among others. It manages multiple aspects of the business such as clients, projects, employees, charge rates, invoicing, revenue forecasting and work scheduling and integrates with MYOB, other accounting systems, and Outlook.

Since 2005, the time management software has been his sole focus. The business is a family-run one, with O’Leary’s wife and two of three children working for it.

He has been focusing on marketing Abtrac to businesses in Australia and New Zealand. The software is currently being used in about 160 sites in the region. O’Leary divides his time between his office in Kumeu, managing the workflow, and out of the office, marketing Abtrac.

According to O’Leary, it has been a difficult year, as “people are less likely to spend”. O’Leary says, business owners need to stop looking at technology as a cost and look at it as an investment.