Technology is keeping us all connected these days, but there are
concerns that all that incoming data may be cutting into productivity.
Recent research indicates that workers are interrupted, usually by an
email or phone call, about 11 times an hour.
There are also study results that show workers spend as much as 23
percent of office time on emails alone.
Those kinds of facts are leading companies to set up online policies,
said Donna Greer, director of information systems technology at Midstate
College.
"Different businesses already have rules on what you can and cannot do
that might affect cellphone use or checking Facebook pages," she said.
"We've heard reports that when companies hold staff meetings, younger
staffers bring their smartphones to the meeting. That can lead to distraction
problems," said Greer.
Time management has been a concern of business for a long time, predating
computer use, she said. "Now you have technology put on top of everything
else," said Greer.
While multitasking has become the buzzword of the day, Greer questions
how many jobs are really undertaken at once. "You're really only doing one
thing at a time," she said.
To avoid being distracted, a worker must judge the importance of the job
at hand, said Greer. "It comes down to focusing and prioritizing. Whatever the
technology, a company still needs to get tasks done," she said.
Gloria Mark, a professor in the department of informatics at the
University of California, Irvine, has made a study of how technology is used,
specifically looking at work interruptions.
"What we found is that the average amount of time that people spent on
any single event before being interrupted or before switching was about three
minutes. Actually, three minutes and five seconds, on average," Mark stated in
an interview with the Gallup Business Journal.
Not all interruptions are the same, she said. "People interrupted
themselves as much as they were interrupted by external sources -- about 44
percent of the time. The rest of the interruptions were from external
sources," noted Mark.
As to getting back on track after being interrupted, Mark said research
indicated there was good news and bad news.
"The good news is that most interrupted work was resumed on the same day
-- 81.9 percent of the time -- and it was resumed, on average, in 23 minutes
and 15 seconds, which I guess is not so long," she said.
"The bad news is, when you're interrupted, you don't immediately go back
to the task you were doing before you were interrupted," stated Mark.
