We've all heard of productivity killers.  They’re the things that take us away from what we should really be focused on.  Everyone on your staff is there for a specific reason and so the concept of opportunity cost is what you’ve potentially missed out on, by doing something else. 

When a staff member in your South Florida business spends his or her time doing a function that is not core to their role, everyone in the office loses.  

Whether we’re aware of it or not, opportunity cost is already happening in our personal lives, every day.  Most people don't wash their own cars or change their own oil. 

Your business life shouldn’t be any different. You shouldn't be crawling under a desk working on a computer if you’re not the IT support guy. You shouldn't be sitting at a computer loading software, if you’re not the IT guy.  And the same goes for the rest of your staff.

At a basic level, this is what an IT company can and should do for your business.  A great IT company can and will do even more.

Here’s a better example to help put things into perspective. Let’s say you earn $150 an hour at your professional job.  You need to paint the nursery in your home before the weekend so you decide to take a PTO day from work to do the job yourself.  It took you 8 hours to paint, and an 8 hour day at work would have earned you $1,200.  A professional painter on the other hand would have gotten the room done in 2 hours at a rate of $125 an hour. The cost of the professional painter would have been $250 as opposed to your $1,200.  Even after purchasing the paint, you probably would still have saved about $800.  This is where the economic concept of opportunity cost comes into play. 

You're paying good money for your people.  Even the smallest of deviations or distractions in the office can cause large problems.   Keep them working on the things that move your business forward, because those things are the reasons why you hired them in the first place!