The conclusion of a recent harmon.ie survey is virally spreading across the web into newspapers and blogs. All you need to do is run a Google search on the clause that the “proliferation of collaboration and social tools designed to increase productivity is actually costing businesses millions of dollars per year in lost productivity” to see over 2,600 matched results.
The Daily News of Newburyport, the local rag here, includes that quotation as part of an op-ed that surmises Facebook is a waste of time.
As if this is news.
It is not surprising this “lost productivity” adds up to $10,375 wasted annually by workers earning $30 an hour. Nor is it surprising businesses with 1,000 employees are seeing $10 million lost.
But before you block employee access to Facebook, take away the additional monitors, or forbid employees to turn on their mobile devices at the workplace, can employers and wannabe publishers take a deeper look at the harmon.ie press release announcing the survey results from the 500 U.S. employees who took it?
IT managers should take a hard look at the paragraph in the press release devoted to ineffective document management.
Users also spend an average of 2-1/2 hours per week trying to find the documents they need in multiple local, corporate and cloud repositories. That adds up to 16 work days annually, costing businesses $3,900 per $30/hour employee per year to subsidize inefficient document management. The problem is exacerbated by the use of email attachments instead of posting documents to a central repository where they can be easily located. The survey found that:
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.
When you consider Facebook is only responsible for 9% of lost productivity, but emailing uses 23%, how come that Daily News op-ed fails to mention anything about email?
Stop picking on Facebook. Stop picking on social media. When 73% of users are implementing their own individual mandates to curb social appetite, the onus should be on managers to understand why email and searchability are the bigger culprits of lost productivity.
{ 11 comments… read them below or add one }
May 31, 2011 at 6:29 PM
So true. Ive had a very short stunt working in an office setting, and I see people spending most of their time just sending email after email, organizing email, searching email, etc.
I agree with you: old media needs to stop picking on new media. Can’t we all just get along?
I agree, not just personal email but “work” email is a time waster. Surfing on Facebook or Twitter on the other hand kinda boosts productivity because it gives me a much needed mental break from the monotone.
Email, facebook and forum browsing are all huge time wasters for me. Before I know it, an hour has passed and left struggling to get what I needed done for the day. They recently blocked facebook at work which has helped a little, but email can really sneak up on you if you’re not careful
I agree, e-mail can be the killer of productivity and stealer of time – you get chatting via e-mail, too and it can be such a distraction.
I can’t comment on an office type of setting as I am just not involved with them. I could see email and other online activity being a distraction and lost productivity. The thing I notice in recent years is an increase in cell phone usage. I am not to big into cell phones and have no idea what people do on them so much. Text messaging or something I guess. People standing in line at a store are on them, even the clerk like it is no big deal or the norm now. It’s just the whole digital thing is distracting in the workplace and everywhere. People want or need to know right now, not when they get home or on break. A whole different world now compared to when I grew up, and that wasn’t that long ago.
That reminds me, texting… better known as Blackberry and iPhone addictions – if we cannot e-mail then we can surely BBM or text one another on LiveProfile. Oh, the distractions and love-hate relationship
Very interesting article. I spun off on this and delved more into what email does and what it doesn’t do over in this post- Copernicus and the Inbox
June 1, 2011 at 10:32 PM
This is so true. I have done it myself so am guilty but never really realised the cost to employees befor.
Good point, the employees should at least learn how to compile and manage files attached on email so they won’t spend too much time browsing for it. Sending is indeed time consuming. What’s the use of Skype and other IMs? You can use VOIP and other real time web based communication tools instead of emailing.
June 2, 2011 at 3:04 AM
Social media accounts for my own loss of productivity as I basically call my friends instead of emailing them. I barely get emails unless blog related and stuff.
June 2, 2011 at 2:57 PM
Interesting article. I’m on social media sites like Facebook and Twitter for a good portion of my work day, but only on those accounts that I manage for my company, so I guess you could say using Facebook actually helps increase my level of productivity, as I’m sure it does for a lot of people who use it for work-related purposes.
I can definitely relate to others’ sentiments about E-mail as a big time-waster. Although I almost always immediately download and save documents that people E-mail me, I still find myself using more time than I probably should be searching through a huge inbox to pinpoint specific information.