Harmon.ie commissioned a recent study that reported digital distractions have become a major issue at work. They affect both work and time outside work hours, often blurring the distinction between the two. For example, the majority of people under the age of 40 stay digitally-connected in bed, and 44% of people stay connected during a night out at the movies. Of course many of these connections are for personal reasons, but often work is involved. In the following result summaries the bullets are in the words of the study. Here are some of the work related findings:
- Two out of three users will interrupt a group meeting to communicate with someone else digitally, either by answering email (48%), answering a mobile phone (35%), chatting via IM (28%), updating their status on a social network (12%) or tweeting (9%).
- Relatively few workers disconnect to focus on a task (32%) or during virtual meetings or teleconferences (30%), webcasts (26%) or lunch (12%).
- A majority of workers turn off their devices only when their boss asks them to (85%) or during one-on-one meetings (63%).
Most of the distractions are digital.
- Users reported getting sidetracked in email processing (23%), switching windows to complete tasks (10%), personal online activities such as: Facebook (9%), instant messaging (6%), text messaging (5%) and Web search (3%).
- Multiple devices on the desktop contribute to the problem, with 65% of respondents reporting that they utilize up to three additional monitors and/or mobile devices simultaneously with their main computer screen as they work.
Companies have responded with strategies to limit these distractions.
- 68% of respondents reported that their employers have implemented policies or technologies to minimize distractions, while 73% of end users have adopted self-imposed techniques to help maintain focus.
- The #1 corporate strategy used to discourage digital diversion is blocking access to public social networks such as Facebook and/or other non-business websites (48%).
A related, but different, problem is the difficulty in finding content. Respondents reported that they spend an average of 2-1/2 hours per week trying to find the documents needed in multiple local, corporate and cloud repositories.
- The user’s email inbox is the #1 location searched, with 76% of respondents reporting email as the first place they look. Other locations include the desktop (69%), file server (52%), shared workspace (34%), portable storage device (18%) and/or cloud storage (9%).
- The average user emails two or more documents per day to an average of five people for review, increasing email-based document volume by up to 50 documents per week. The fact that these attachments are stored on multiple local computers complicates the challenge of finding the latest document versions as well as merging feedback from multiple reviewers.
All of this points to a very disorganized workplace. The very tools that are supposed to help us are actually overwhelming us in some cases. The solution starts with a unified strategy for digital communication and requires some smart policies, cultural issues and wise implementation of limited number of technologies. I wrote about this recently (see Taking Control of Our Knowledge Consumption and Our Social Presence). I quoted Nick Carr whose new book, The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains address this issue, “companies need to challenge the assumption that employees should always be available. Some people do their best work when they’re disconnected, and companies should create a work culture that encourages it.” It sounds like they need to actually force many people to disconnect.
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