Recent research highlights that workers spend an average of seven hours a week searching for the information they need to do their job. That’s almost a full day and is not helped by the fact that more data will be created this year than in the past 5,000 years.

What difference would it make to business if employees were productive for an additional seven hours a week? Attendees at Ricoh’s flagship Freedom to Operate event this week will be able to explore the barriers to working more effectively and discover how they can start dismantling them, freeing up employees to do more.

"Most organisations are overwhelmed with information today," Ricoh UK and Ireland director Chas Moloney said. "They need information to work for them, not hold them back. This event is designed to give attendees concrete strategies for seizing that information, putting it to work and reaping the results."

The event, which is taking place at the Royal Hospital Kilmainham, will cover a wide number of key themes including speeding the flow of business critical information; making operations more effective and efficient, and improving sustainability.

Elsewhere, a seminar on how to build a business on your ideas is taking place in Waterford on Thursday, to provide an insight into what patents, trademarks and industrial designs are, and how they should be managed. There will also be an opportunity for attendees to hear about government supports available from incubation to commercialisation.

Encouraging businesses to attend the seminar, Minister for Research and Innovation Seán Sherlock said: “It is not generally known that over 80 per cent of new inventions are derived from, or inspired by, previous inventions.”