Always-on access to technology ranging from email to social networks is not only making employees less productive, it is also making them ruder, a study has claimed.
According to a survey among 500 firms undertaken by online market researcher uSamp on behalf of collaboration software provider harmon.ie, a huge three out of five interruptions to staff concentration at work are caused by online tools.
Around 45% of those questioned were unable to work for more than 15 minutes without being distracted, while 53% wasted at least an hour a day dealing with email, text and instant messages as well as playing around on social networks.
The report said: “That hour per day translates into £3,277.50 of wasted productivity per person annually, assuming an average salary of £14.25 per hour. For businesses with 1,000 employees, the cost of employee interruptions exceeds £3.2 million per year and total cost to UK plc is £57.8 billion.”
But access to such technology is also making employers more discourteous. Two out of three users said they would be prepared to interrupt a meeting to communicate with someone else digitally, either by answering email (48%) or answering a mobile phone (35%).
A further 28% felt it was fine to chat to someone else in the middle of the gathering using instant messaging, 12% were quite prepared to update their status on a social network and another 9% to start tweeting.
Only a third said they would unhook themselves from the internet to focus on a given task, take part in a virtual meeting or teleconference (30%) and web cast (26%) – or even to have their lunch (12%). In fact, a massive 85% of those questioned indicated that they would only turn their device off when asked to by their boss or during a one-to-one meeting (63%).
