Information Overload: Productivity Killer?

Conservative estimates by International Data Corporation (IDC) suggest that an organization with 1,000 employees wastes at least $2.5 million per year due to the information overload dilemma such as failing to find existing information, searching for outdated information or recreating information that is outdated and poorly designed. The opportunity costs are even greater, exceeding $15million annually.

Highlights of the average number of hours spent globally per week by knowledge workers on the four main business activities include: 9.00 hours a week is spent on preparing, running and summarizing actions for meetings while 6.78 hours are spent managing and consolidating information such as documents, emails and web research. For communication and collaboration such as building power point presentations, writing documents with others and communicating the results to colleagues takes 5.74 hours per week. Finally, 10.70 hours is spent on project and task management.

In European results UK comes last in information management, spending 7.08 hours per week, with France spending 6.69 and Germany 5.91 hours.

According to the above graphs the average number of hours spent globally per week by knowledge workers on managing information accounts for 6.7 hours. In USA context the average number of hours spent per week on managing information accounts for 7 hours.

Based on surveys, Information Overload is pushing workers to the brink and cutting into workplace productivity. It has been identified that workers spend up to 50 percent of their day managing information. Information Overload costs the U.S. economy a minimum of $900 billion per year in lowered employee productivity and reduced innovation. This is a fairly conservative number and reflects the loss of 25% of the employee’s day.

Surveys indicate that 7 out of 10 office workers in the United States feel overwhelmed by information in the workplace, and more than two in five say they are headed for a data “breaking point,”.

The results of the survey reveal:

• 62 percent of professionals report that they spend a lot of time sifting through irrelevant information to find what they need; 68 percent wish they could spend less time organizing information and more time using the information that comes their way.

• Workers admit that not being able to lay their hands on the right information at the right time impedes their ability to work efficiently; 85 percent agree that not being able to access the right information at the right time is a huge time-waster.

• More than 40 percent of the survey participants indicate an inability to handle future increases in information flow.

• While an average workday for white-collar workers is 8.89 hours, the survey finds that on average, 7.89 working hours are used conducting research, attending meetings, and searching for previously created documents.

• White-collar professionals spend an average of 2.3 hours daily conducting online research, with one in 10 spending four hours or more on an average day.

In an 8.89-hour average workday, employees said they spent 7.89 hours conducting research, attending meetings and searching for documents, the survey found.

Harvard Business Review has recently found that an average worker spends 40% of the work day merely processing information which translates into only 60% of the average work day being spent on true value creation activities. 40% of the payroll costs are spent handling the overload.

The chart above indicates that spending too much time conducting research is the second highest occurrence in an average working week.

After an observation of employees in a various industries, it was found that 68% wished they could spend less time organizing information and more time using it. Another 85% said not finding the right information at the right time was a significant time waster, while 62% said they spent a lot of time sifting through useless information.

athandz Formatted Research = Reliable Information/Results + Minimal Time + Economical!

To see the complete research report please click here