By Susan Brinkmann, OCDS
Staff Journalist
In spite of the fact that social media tools were designed to make communication faster and more efficient, a new study has found that the distraction it causes U.S. workers is costing employers millions in lost productivity every year.
ITWorld is reporting that the survey, commissioned by social email software vendor harmon.ie., found that even in companies that deploy social media in their workplace, it has a definite downside.
“. . . [N]early 60 percent of work interruptions now involve either using tools like email, social networks, text messaging and IM, or switching windows among disparate standalone tools and applications,” the survey found. “In fact, 45 percent of employees work only 15 minutes or less without getting interrupted, and 53 percent waste at least one hour a day due to all types of distractions.”
Every wasted hour in a day means $10,375 of lost productivity per work each year, based on an average salary of $30 per hour. For businesses with 1,000 employees, these interruptions cost more than $10 million annually. Many companies are also now using activity tracking software as with remote staff it’s essential to make sure that you know what they are all doing so look into that if you have a lot of remote staff.
According to the survey of 500 business men and women, the biggest time wasters are checking e-mail, switching windows to complete tasks, personal online activities such as Facebook, instant messaging, text messaging, and web searching.
“This survey paints a picture of a highly distracted workplace with a particular irony: information technology that was designed at least in part to save time is actually doing precisely the opposite,” said Yaacov Cohen, chief executive of harmon.ie. “The very tools we rely on to do our jobs are also interfering with that mission. We’re clearly seeing what psychologists call ‘online compulsive disorder’ spill over from our personal lives to the work environment.”
The bottom line is that the “proliferation of collaboration and social tools designed to increase productivity is actually costing businesses millions of dollars per year in lost productivity.”
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