Technology intrusions cost companies dearly

Within the heart of your company, saboteurs lurk.

Disguised as instruments of productivity, they are subverting your staff’s most precious resource— attention.

Incessant e-mail alerts, instant messages, buzzing BlackBerrys and cell phones are decimating workplace concentration.

The average information worker—basically anyone at a desk—loses 2.1 hours of productivity every day to interruptions and distractions, according to Basex, an IT research and consulting firm.

That time is money. Computer chip giant Intel, for one, has estimated that e-mail overload can cost large companies as much as $1 billion a year in lost employee productivity.

The intrusions are constant: each day a typical office employee checks e-mail 50 times and uses instant messaging 77 times, according to RescueTime, a firm that develops time-management software.

Such interruptions don’t just sidetrack workers from their jobs, they also undermine their attention spans, increase stress and annoyance and decrease job satisfaction and creativity.
The interruption epidemic is reaching a crisis point at some companies and shows no sign of slowing.

E-mail volume is growing at a rate of 66 per cent a year, according to the E-Policy Institute. More people are texting. More are using Facebook or Twitter for work.

“It’s worse than it’s ever been,” says Michelle Rupp, owner of NRG Seattle, an insurance brokerage with a staff of 12 who feel pounded by the avalanche of messaging. “It’s so hard to stay focused. Everything bings and bongs and tweets at you, and you don’t think.”

Yes, it is possible to blunt the interruption assault.

But business leaders must go on the offensive in a realm most are oblivious to: interruption management.

The myth of multitasking

Human brains come equipped with two kinds of attention: involuntary and voluntary.

Involuntary attention, designed to be on the watch for threats to survival, is triggered by outside stimuli—-what grabs you.

It’s automatically rattled by the workday cacophony of rings, pings and buzzes that are turning jobs into an electronic game of Whac-a-Mole.