Are you ready to work? If you had any doubt about how much business owners work, the Staples survey of small business released earlier this month provides some evidence.
Ninety-eight percent of U.S. small-business owners and managers are working during their time off–including nights, weekends and vacations–and nearly 54 percent expect to work even harder in 2008.
The survey done for Staples is based on an internet poll of more than 300 small businesses with no more than 20 employees or, perhaps, 300 people pretending to be businesses with no more than 20 employees (after all, how can an internet poll really tell?).
Other interesting results include:
- The car remains a favorite place to work, with 72 percent saying they make business calls while driving and nearly 40 percent saying they get their best ideas behind the wheel.
- Slightly more than 38 percent cannot remember the last time they took a vacation.
- If given a choice, nearly 52 percent said they would accept comparable business results in 2008 if they could have twice as much free time, while 48 percent said they would work even more hours if they could double their company’s sales.
- More than 84 percent said they have not yet incorporated “new media” (blogs, podcasts, virtual meeting software or services) into their business activities.
- Fifty-two percent make New Year’s resolutions for their business. Of those, 58 percent said they resolve to increase business, while only 21 percent said they want more time off. Thirty-five percent said they want to increase profits/eliminate debt.
I didn’t like the way Staples led with what it was calling “sleepworking,” as explained here:
According to the 2nd Annual Staples National Small-Business Survey, more than half of small-business professionals said that work has actually become part of their dreams. Fifty-one percent of those surveyed said that they “sleepwork” (i.e. dream about work), and nearly 70 percent of those “sleepworkers” report they wake up and put their “work dreams” to action.
I say that’s just silly. We get involved with our work; we like our work some days and hate it others, and dreaming is part of life, not just work. The idea of calling dreaming work just doesn’t make it. If you’re interested, I posted on that theme on Small Business Trends, and there is a lively set of comments attached to that post.
But enough of that. Here’s some more interesting data:
The results revealed organization and teamwork are the top factors why owners and managers are working so many hours. Nearly 70 percent admitted they do not have a written business plan. Almost three-quarters consider themselves organized, but only 33 percent said they complete the tasks on their “to-do” list each day. Slightly more than two-thirds said they feel constantly challenged by not having enough time to get work done and nearly 44 percent said customer fulfillment takes up the majority of their time while at work.
When asked to compare their businesses to a track and field event at the Olympics, a mere 14 percent said their business operates like a relay race, with everybody working in tandem toward the same goal, whereas 26 percent think of business operations as a 100-meter dash, always sprinting and trying to do everything quickly.
Hmmm … marathon, anyone?
This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 16th, 2008 at 3:21 am and is filed under startup stories. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.5 Responses to “Be Your Own Boss. Work Harder. Lose Sleep.”
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January 16th, 2008 at 1:29 pm
In regards to your opinion of the survey, I pulled this off the official release: “The survey was developed by Staples and conducted by Decision Analyst, Inc. in Arlington, TX. Decision Analyst surveyed by Internet a nationally-representative random sample of 302 owners and executives of American businesses having no more than 20 employees. All respondents were members of American Consumer Opinion® online, Decision Analyst’s proprietary Internet based consumer-opinion panel with over 7,000,000 members globally. Interviews were conducted from December 7 to December 11, 2007. Such a sample has a margin of error of plus or minus 2.0 percent at the 95 percent confidence level. For more information about American Consumer Opinion® online please visit http://www.acop.com.”
As for the track and field question, I looked closer at the survey and found that more than 26 percent responded that their company works like a marathon with “steady speed, detailed plan, controlled, intelligently relaxed and ready to sprint past the pack at just the right time.”
It’s interesting that this subject would upset you. If people are dreaming about work and actually getting good ideas, what’s the problem? Do they really have a choice?
January 16th, 2008 at 2:26 pm
[...] that point, "Be Your Own Boss, Work Harder, Lose Sleep" summarizes a recent Staples Business online poll that found all sorts of nasty realities about [...]
January 16th, 2008 at 3:07 pm
Dreamweaver: thanks for the comments.
Regarding me being “upset,” I suspect from your comment that in fact we agree. I, too, think dreams are good. I believe in the power of dreams, and in their relationship to creativity and life itself. What took me back a bit was the presentation of dreaming about work as if that were just more work. In context, it seemed the researchers were just adding dream time to work time. Please go look at the source reference, the original post I link to, to see that spelled out.
Re the survey, thanks for the addition. I read that in the linked documents, too. A methodology paragraph doesn’t resolve my cynicism about the difference between what people really think and who they really are, and what they say they think and who they say they are when pollsters ask them.
Thanks for joining in,
Tim
January 16th, 2008 at 3:29 pm
[...] for making it news. This “study” appeared in niche-market publications (like Inc., Entrepreneur and even American Drycleaner), as well as dailies across the [...]
March 2nd, 2008 at 11:01 pm
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