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United States worker
interruptions
costly, research
shows
By Ellen Wulfhorst
NEW YORK (Reuters)
U.S. office workers
get interrupted on
the job as often as
11 times an hour,
costing as much as
$588 billion to U.S.
business each year,
according to
research.
Adding the
distracting lure of
checking e-mails,
surfing the Internet
and chatting by
computer, and
workers interrupt
themselves nearly as
much as they are
interrupted by
others, experts say.
"With instant
messaging on your
desktop and alerts
and e-mail
notifications, you
set yourself up for
it," said John
Putzier, founder of
FirStep Inc.
business strategists
in Prospect,
Pennsylvania.
The barrage of
interruptions and
distractions only
worsens at this time
of year, experts
say.
"We have more things
pulling at us," said
Jonathan Spira,
chief executive of
Basex, a business
consulting firm that
researched the cost
of interruptions.
From online shopping
at work to planning
the office holiday
party, workers are
bombarded with
distractions, he
said.
"These holiday
distractions result
in more
interruptions. It's
certainly a recipe
for even less work
getting done, no
question about it,"
he said.
A typical manager is
interrupted six
times an hour, one
recent study showed,
while another found
the average cubicle
worker is
interrupted more
than 70 times a day.
Other research has
found office workers
getting interrupted
every 11 minutes,
while another study
said nearly half of
workplace
interruptions are
self-imposed.
A study by Basex
found office
distractions take up
2.1 hours of the
average day -- 28
percent -- with
workers taking an
average of five
minutes to recover
from each
interruption and
return to their
original tasks.
Still another study
found a group of
workers interrupted
by e-mail and
telephones scored
lower on an IQ test
than a test group
that had smoked
marijuana.
INTERRUPTED YET?
Workers live in a
state of "continuous
partial attention,"
said Linda Stone, a
Seattle-based writer
and lecturer on
attention and
trends.
"The motivation is
'I don't want to
miss anything'
because being
connected makes me
feel important," she
said. "It's 'There's
my BlackBerry.
There's my cell
phone. What time is
it in Europe right
now? How many phone
calls did I get?'
"It's a sense of
stimulation and
busy-ness," she
said.
Plenty of people
would be lost
without the
"multi-tasking"
battery of
telephones, handheld
messaging devices
and computer instant
messages, said
Putzier.
"In some cases,
people would go into
withdrawal if they
weren't constantly
interrupted," he
said. "For some
people,
interruptions aren't
interruptions to
their job.
Interruptions are
their job."
Workers tend to be
unable to resist the
temptation of what
Lee Rainie, director
of the
Washington-based Pew
Internet & American
Life Project, called
"scanning the
horizon for any and
all new
possibilities."
"Why don't you just
shut off your
e-mail? Why don't
you shut off your
phone or close your
door? The answer is
because I can never
tell where a more
important message
will fly in," he
said.
Putzier puts the
blame on younger
Generation X and
Generation Y
workers. "They are
the big-time
abusers. If they
need something or
want something, they
don't pick up the
phone and ask for an
appointment. They
just barge in, and
it's all about
them," he said.
Basex calculated the
cost of
interruptions in
lost working hours
to U.S. business is
$588 billion a year.
"It's a lot of time
and productivity
wasted," said Bary
Sherman, head of the
Institute for
Business
Technology-USA in
San Diego,
California, that has
developed a White
Collar Productivity
Index.
Rainie called the
pace of
interruptions "a
double-edged
proposition."
"People like the
convenience and
possibilities that
this technology
affords them when
they want to use
it," he said, "but
they don't like the
intrusions that it
creates for them
when other people
want to express the
same rights."
The "constantly
connected" trend is
sowing the seeds of
its own destruction,
said Stone, who
said, "We are
overstimulated,
overwhelmed and
unfulfilled."
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