Getting work done with all the communications distractions seems to be more difficult then ever. It was bad enough when people walked into the office/cubicle when you were already busy. Now with the digital world imposing its will on nearly everyone, the digital distractions are worse than the in-person distractions. Being busy (i.e., working) does mean productivity.
Most people mix social networking with business communications. We have both operating simultaneously; there is no border between them. Enterprises are now creating their own internal social networks which will add to the digital distractions problem.
We constantly hear how communications and collaboration (Unified Communications) will make us more productive, reduce travel costs and create better relationships. Yes, there is this up side. But there is also a down side: interruptions and distractions. Distractions limit the time of focused work. Distractions can cause lost time in restarting the work effort. Distractions can lead to errors. Distractions cost money in lost productivity.
The distractions will not stop. Part of the solution to distraction is using technology like Presence. Another would be using a common device for all digital communications. There are also behavioral changes for both the contacting and contacted communicating employees.
What is the Problem with Multiple Communications Channels?
We e-mail, IM, tweet, have desktop phones and smart mobile phones and PCs, check Facebook, receive LinkedIn messages, have a Skype identity, use tablets. We have multiple devices and usually have two or more active at a time. It is nearly impossible to avoid being contacted by one or more persons or systems at a time while also trying to be productive. It is common that most of the channels operate independent of each other.
There have been many articles and blogs discussing the change in the behavior of younger people who participate in social communications. But this phenomenon does not stop with them. Older generations are being affected and their work productivity suffers. For articles and books on this subject, see "8 Must- Reads About Digital Distraction and Information Overload," by David Lavenda.
What are Business Interruptions?
A paper, "Work Interrupted: A Closer Look at the Role of Interruptions in Organized Life," by Quintus R. Jett and Jennifer M. George of Rice University, published in the Academy of Management Review. discusses four forms of interruptions. The following table is derived from their paper:
So what is a digital distraction? It is the psychological reaction produced by some external stimulus, a communications function and/or device, or other activity that interrupts the focus and concentration of the primary work of an individual. The digital distraction consumes employee time and changes their focus.
The distraction lasts longer than the actual distraction event. It takes time for the individual to refocus on the primary task, and the refocus may require a brief relearning period and may also result in errors, or work being performed a second time to ensure accuracy.
Digital vs. Personal Distractions
A survey, "I Can’t Get My Work Done! How Collaboration & Social Tools Drain Productivity," published by harmon.ie, clearly demonstrates the growth and adverse affects of digital distractions. Harmon.ie is a provider of social email software.
The harmon.ie survey found that digital distractions are more common than in-person distractions. Part of the difference is due to the ability of a person to physically notice that the worker is absorbed in work and should not be disturbed. Another reason is that the in-person distraction requires one individual to physically seek out the other individual. Harmon.ie found that 57% of the interruptions were digital while 43% were in-person distractions.
When there is no physical or visual contact, the person or function that causes the digital distraction does not necessarily know the status of the individual that is being contacted. This lack of status knowledge allows the contacting individual and system to assume that the individual to be contacted is free to accept the interruption. The contacting individual does not know the effect the interruption will have on the productivity of the contacted individual.
Breakdown of the most common workplace distractions (By Activity)
From "I Can't Get My Work Done! How Collaboration & Social Tools Drain Productivity"
How Many Contacts/Connections?
In "Don't Believe Facebook; You Only Have 150 Friends," Robin Dunbar, a professor of evolutionary anthropology at Oxford University states that the optimal number of contacts/relationships to manage is 150. Dunbar believes that there are neurological mechanisms in place that help in dealing with a large number of contacts/connections. The problem with having a large number of contacts, according to Dunbar is that "relationships involved across very big units [a large number of contacts] then become very casual--and don't have that deep meaning and sense of obligation and reciprocity that you have with your close friends."
In another paper "The Benefits of Facebook "Friends:" Social Capital and College Students' Use of Online Social Network Sites," by Nicole B. Ellison, Charles Steinfield and Cliff Lampe of the Department of Telecommunication, Information Studies, and Media Michigan State University, the authors write:
"Facebook and other social contact mechanisms will continue in use once the college student graduates. Our empirical results contrast with the anecdotal evidence dominating the popular press. Although there are clearly some image management problems experienced by students as reported in the press, and the potential does exist for privacy abuses, our findings demonstrate a robust connection between Facebook usage and indicators of social capital.... Internet use alone did not predict social capital accumulation, but intensive use of Facebook did.
"The strong linkage between Facebook use and high school connections...may help maintain relations as people move from one offline community to another. It may facilitate the same when students graduate from college, with alumni keeping their school e-mail address and using Facebook to stay in touch with the college community. Such connections could have strong payoffs in terms of jobs, internships, and other opportunities. Colleges may want to explore ways to encourage this sort of usage."
"The strong linkage between Facebook use and high school connections...may help maintain relations as people move from one offline community to another. It may facilitate the same when students graduate from college, with alumni keeping their school e-mail address and using Facebook to stay in touch with the college community. Such connections could have strong payoffs in terms of jobs, internships, and other opportunities. Colleges may want to explore ways to encourage this sort of usage."
The article, "Marketers refuse to hire people without a LinkedIn profile," points out that not having as many professional contacts/connections can be detrimental to one's career. Two quotes from the article demonstrate the necessity for increasing and maintaining the LinkedIn contacts:
* "People with more than 20 connections are 34 times more likely to be approached with a job opportunity than people with less than five.
* All 500 of the Fortune 500 are represented in LinkedIn. In fact, 499 of them are represented by director-level and above employees."
The conclusion of this article is that there must be social networking connections if you want your career to move forward. It is also important to exercise those contacts, otherwise they lose their value.
A poll conducted by "The LinkedIn Personal Trainer” asked respondents, "How many LinkedIn connections do you have right now?" Over 80% had 51 or more connections on LinkedIn (see chart below). Assuming that the employee exercises moderate contact with several of the connections, there will be continuous distractions from LiknkedIn alone.
There is advice at ViralFuture recommending the use of social media to build business. The advice includes outreach tactics such as:
* "Create Twitter Account and send out daily/weekly content about the business, products, services, industry news, etc.
* Create Facebook page & fan page and tie in Twitter updates/manual Updates
* Create LinkedIn account and send out daily content about the business, products and services, etc.
* Create weekly content on blog that automatically populates Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn
* Create YouTube videos on weekly basis (initially) and populate on Twitter, YouTube, and LinkedIn
* Post pictures of business, products, etc. on Flickr, populate on Twitter, Facebook & LinkedIn"
All of these recommendations mean that the enterprise employee that deals with OEMs, VARs, consultants and other business contacts can be flooded with dozens if not hundreds of different digital distractions every day, almost all of which are unsolicited.
The number of potential digital distractions will only increase as enterprises decide to add their own internal social networks. The employee can opt in or out of the external social networks but will most likely be forced to join the internal social network.
Lost Productivity
Returning to productive work is the goal after a distraction. I have found that the longer the time between distractions, the more productive I am. I find that as the time between distractions decreases, the less productive I am. I would prefer a 20 minute distraction rather than 4 five-minute distractions. The harmon.ie survey determined that 45% of the employees could not work more than 15 minutes without experiencing a distraction. 32% responded that they could work up to 30 minutes between distractions. Only 23% could work more than 1 hour between distractions.
The end result of all of these distractions is lost time and usually lost productivity. How much time is lost depends on the ease with which the employee can limit the distraction and the time taken to refocus on the interrupted task. As the table below demonstrates, about 2/3 of the harmon.ie survey respondents lose 30 minutes to 2 hours a day. A total of 21% lose over 2 hours per day. The lost time equals unproductive dollars.
The enterprise has to absorb the increasing cost to perform business tasks. If the enterprise employee makes $30/hour, the cost with the typical employee losing an average of 1.25 hours/day is a loss of $37.50/employee/day. If the employee works 250 days per year, this translates into a loss of $9,375 per employee per year. This can add up to a staggering amount for any enterprise.
How much time do you waste every day dealing with interruptions?
Table data from "I Can’t Get My Work Done! How Collaboration & Social Tools Drain Productivity"
Multiple Device Usage
Part of the problem of distractions is that the average employee has 2 or more devices open at any time. The harmon.ie survey determined that only 35% of the respondents used just one device. Two devices were open for 46% of the respondents, and 19% had 3 or more devices open simultaneously.
It is not unexpected that younger employees have more devices open than older employees. The bar chart below shows that the under 30 age group has two or more devices open about twice as often as does the over 50 age group. It is speculation, but it is more likely as the younger group ages, it will continue to have 2 or more devices open unless the communications industry can bring together all of the digital distractions onto a common platform. This would require vendors to support interoperability with a wide variety of devices and networks.
Uses two or more devices at the same time, by Age Group
From "I Can’t Get My Work Done! How Collaboration & Social Tools Drain Productivity"
Work Output Losses
The harmon.ie survey found that fully 1/3 of the respondents had difficulty working and producing output due to distractions. The next problems were the inability to think deeply and creatively at 25%. 21% had to contend with information overload. 10% missed deadlines. 5% had unhappy customers. Another 5% said that the distractions caused emotional issues where they were evaluated poorly, were angry or lost or quit their job. This last 5% meant that the enterprise would probably have to retrain or hire new employees. Either way, there would be costs incurred by the enterprise that could have been avoided.
What problems have these interruptions created for you?
From "I Can’t Get My Work Done! How Collaboration & Social Tools Drain Productivity"
Strategic Solutions
There are three potential solutions that can be applied to reduce the wastefulness of digital distractions:
* Introduce enabling technologies that allow the employee and enterprise to manage interruptions
* Change the habits of the contacted employee
* Change the habits of the contacting employee
The harmon.ie survey (bar chart below) suggested several possible solutions. About 48% opted to block access to public social media networks such as Facebook, or websites not related to work. This would be problematic if LinkedIn were blocked for me. I use LinkedIn for business contacts, research, seeking answers to questions and looking for new contacts.
The next most popular selection was to track online usage patterns. This assumes that those with unusual usage patterns will be encouraged to change their patterns to reduce distractions through policies and training. The least likely selections--no Facebook and no-email Fridays--may be impossible to accomplish.
What tools/policies has your organization introduced to minimize distractions at work? (Multiple selections allowed)
From "I Can't Get My Work Done! How Collaboration & Social Tools Drain Productivity",br> 
One area not suggested in the survey was the broad use of Presence information. Presence technology is an application that enables a user to locate and identify a device (computer, cell phone, smartphone, tablet, laptop or any other computing device that can communicate) wherever it may be, as soon as the employee connects the device to a network. Presence technology fosters communications and collaboration anywhere at anytime.
Use of Presence is a two way street. I would like to know the status of those whom I wish to contact, and what media is available for the communications. I, as the communications requester should also respect the person I wish to contact and not try to circumvent the others person's preferences. The party to be contacted may have elected as preferences, for example, to not accept calls, to allow no call forwarding but accept e-mail.
When I am the receiver of the communications, I should not arbitrarily block communications because I don’t like to talk on the phone or receive text communications. I should provide realistic information about my status and preferences. I have worked with some people that turn off their phone ringer all day long no matter what they are doing, wasting time for the caller who attempts to call multiple times.
But Presence status information has to cover not only the network in the enterprise. I have many contacts using other networks to communicate such as Google, Skype, Microsoft, multiple IM services and wireless devices. All of these are off-net. If Presence is to have greater value, a good Presence engine should be interoperable using open standards with the most common off-net devices. This is the direction that the UC industry is moving.
Behavior Changes
Try to avoid the impulse to contact someone or immediately respond to an e-mail or IM. Think about the goal of the communication. It may not be urgent, it may be unnecessary, it may be combined with other communications, or the communications may require some more thought. Have you ever sent an e-mail or IM that later on you wished you had waited and considered the communication more carefully?
Training, training, training that makes the employee aware of the cost of interruptions is essential. Nearly everyone has expressed frustration with interruptions and has anecdotally discovered how bad interruptions can be, but most do not know the statistics and how their own behavior adds to the problem. The training should first provide a real view of the interruption problem using some of the information in this article. Most will be surprised once they grasp the amount of lost time caused by interruptions.
Secondly, the employee needs to learn how to change their own behavior to reduce the influence of interruptions. One of the biggest problems is multiple device usage. Even though the enterprise can use technology on its own network to reduce interruptions, the enterprise cannot directly control the interruptions generated by public networks over cell phones, smartphones, pads and tablets. This latter issue is where training can be most beneficial.
Here are some suggested behavioral changes that could reduce the distractions:
* Read e-mails in groups, for example every 30 to 60 minutes or when you need a break from the task at hand. Do not automatically look at e-mails as your device indicates a new e-mail has arrived.
* Reply to the e-mails as you proceed through the group e-mail batch reading.
* Unsubscribe to e-mails that are no longer useful.
* Turn off your phone ringer and device alerts when you need to concentrate. This can be a problem if you forget to reverse the process and leave the ringer and alerts off. It has been suggested that this action should have a timer, 30, 60 or 90 minutes that would automatically turn the ringer and alerts back on.
* Turn off automated alerts from Facebook and other social networks.
* Schedule time outside the office for work when you need to concentrate and avoid distractions.
* Take time and select your presence status preferences with some thought. Check and revise the preferences every day; conditions change.
* Don't forget that you are the cause of some interruptions and distractions. Communicate when necessary, not impulsively.
* If you must cause an interruption, try to bundle multiple pieces of information into that communication rather sending multiple short communications; batch your communications.
Conclusions
Distractions and interruptions will always occur. The more forms of communications devices and media, the greater the probability that you will be interrupted or you will cause an interruption.
