Workers Inability to Deal with Info Overload Costing Companies
ReadWriteWeb has an interesting post this morning on the Information Overload problem:
Information overload is no longer a joke. For those who suffered with this affliction, it never was, but now that there are real numbers attached to the problem, it has finally prompted companies to take action. Those numbers come from a recent study by a research company called Basex and they are to the tune of $650 billion in wasted productivity. Ironically, the time wasted comes from use of applications and technologies that are supposed to make workers more productive. Unfortunately, they seem to have the opposite effect.
$650 billion is a LOT of lost productivity and clearly finding ways to help people deal with the issue would create some sweet savings.
This also creates a bit of a dilemma for those of us who advocate the use of social media. Many organizations will see “lost productivity” and will decide that the answer is to ban it. But the issue isn’t the tools, it’s how they’re being used. According to the Basex study:
. . . a typical information worker checks his or her email more than 50 times per day, uses IM 77 times, and visits 40+ web sites. These numbers were calculated by tracking software installed on the machines of the 40,000 people taking part in the study.
Often, workers are dropping high-level tasks to deal with mundane, low-priority tasks that come through via these unnecessary interruptions. The end result is fractured attention where the big loss comes from the time it takes to recover from the interruption and get back to work.
I’d hate to see the baby thrown out with the bathwater, but I also recognize that as humans we’re probably hard-wired to pay attention to the flashing messages that come across our screens. Clearly helping people develop the skills to deal with this is a key work literacy. The question is–how can we make this happen?
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June 18th, 2008 at 11:17 am
I have a real problem with this study. The fact of the matter is they are treating people as machines (a very Taylorisc view) as if workers can work on high level tasks without some downtime. The fact is, most of these tools are dependent upon user choice. Who is determining that they are Unnecessary interruptions? The companies? who are treating their workers as machines? Machines have difficulty getting back online when they are down. Humans need to have a change in process or they get burned out.
This reminds me of the time I conducted market research. We were expected to call 30 people a day with a 10-30 minute phone interview. Initially I was reprimanded because I didn’t meet my quota. Soon, however, I was the star performer as I had a much higher completion rate by spending more time on the phone and creating a relationship with the person on the other end. We were trying to develop a database of all Natural Gas producers, pipelines, users, and marketers as the industry was being deregulated. There was no central repository for this information (including the federal government) as many were instate entities only so not subject to interstate commerce. In addition, we were asking major corporations to divulge sensitive information (energy use) that could be used by competitors.
What I was doing was truly knowledge work although it was taking longer than the “assembly line” mentality. In addition to being able to get people to talk (thus the high completion rate), I had a much better idea of each of the pieces in any given market. I soon became able to visualize how each of the pipelines were connected, who used which pipelines, and where the major consumers were (more so than most of the people I interviewed). I needed time to absorb this information, often having to take a break between interviews and reviewing what others had said.
So my question is, who was more productive? According to this survey, I would have been losing money for the company, when in fact, I was an important asset that they did not want to give up when I left for graduate school (we were in negotiation for a new position, but I felt graduate school would get me where I wanted to go–overseas).
June 18th, 2008 at 11:22 am
Great point, Virginia–I think I took it at face-value, as I’m afraid most companies/organizations would do. I think that there’s already a concern that social media has negative impacts on productivity and companies will latch onto this as an illustration of that idea, especially since it was covered in the Wall Street Journal and NYT. The argument you’re making may be more accurate, but is more complex than most people will absorb. For me, that’s one of the issues with talking about these new literacies–they challenge conventional wisdom and force us to re-define things like “productivity.”
June 18th, 2008 at 11:32 am
Not sure what I did, but in commenting to Info Overload, it popped in to previous post. Retrying - Interesting post…yet one wonders if we are seeing the natural dip in productivity when ANY new tool is adopted, before productivity rises again once effective use has been learned. After all, most of these tools are relatively young and adoption is just beginning.
June 18th, 2008 at 12:19 pm
Have you taken a look at my book “Bit Literacy”? The thrust isn’t too far distant from work literacy - it proposes a set of basics skills that people need to survive the age of infinite information.
June 18th, 2008 at 1:46 pm
This brings me back to something I mentioned on my blog previously: we need to define knowledge work better. Perhaps those of you who do training as a profession can let me know if my impression is correct or not, but I feel that industries in which knowledge is the product (most service industries) there is a greater openness to defining work skills whereas those where there is a physical product (steel manufacturing for example) do not recognize the impact that these new technologies have on business structures and the level of \knowledge\ needed in doing work in more traditional industries.
June 18th, 2008 at 6:05 pm
Mark - I have your book next to my desk. There’s definitely overlap. Love to talk to you about that at some point.
June 19th, 2008 at 7:38 am
Maybe the information overload is what prevents people from adopting the new social media tools. I think lots of people feel that since they have tools and a method that works to at least break even with the tide of information that is pushed to them daily, why change? Maybe they are so overloaded with information that they don’t feel they would ever find the time to learn a new tool, PLUS transition out of their old routines.
June 19th, 2008 at 7:25 pm
I agree with Gina that there are two hills to push up - people have settled into a system and don’t see why they should take the time (they don’t have) to learn how to change it, and the the old routine is comfortable and who likes change.
June 24th, 2008 at 12:08 am
I blogged about this study and my knee jerk reaction was “turn off the damn computer and get some work done”
http://beth.typepad.com/beths_blog/2008/06/information-cop.html
But in a conversation with some other folks, I had to ask
What is the sweet spot between personal productivity and connectedness? That connectedness - or social productivity is not something that can be measured in terms of efficiency but has value.
http://beth.typepad.com/beths_blog/2008/06/whats-the-sweet.html