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Staying Afloat in a Digital Flood

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1. Communication: One Size Does Not Fit All
Employees should be trained to assess the business context before deciding whether to dial the phone or hit the ‘send’ button on an e-mail or instant message.

2. Five Tips for Taming Information Overload
Keeping focus in the face of digital distractions can be difficult. Here’s how you—and your organization’s employees—can make a start.

3. Taking a Break From E-mail
One company’s experiment with “E-mail Free Fridays” offers some lessons in how to manage the flood of often unnecessary messages.

4. Measuring the Weight of Information Overload

5. Raising the Problem’s Profile
The newly formed Information Overload Research Group will promote research studies and delve into solutions for information overload, including technology tools and training strategies.

6. Taking Time to Think: The Irony of Bill Gates’ Legacy
Big thoughts, reinvention and career growth come not only from embracing all the benefits of technology, but also from finding the time away from the office and daily pressures.

7. Social Revolution: A Wired Workforce Community
The online social networking phenomenon has pervaded business. Whether it becomes a mere time-waster or a useful tool for recruitment, employee development and collaboration depends on how employers embrace the technology.

8. Building Business Value Through “Communities of Practice”
More and more companies are taking the time to think together and share knowledge from remote corners of the globe.

Measuring the Weight of Information Overload

Several recent analyses have highlighted the costs of information overload and its close cousin—interruptions.
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everal recent analyses have highlighted the costs of information overload and its close cousin—interruptions. Some statistical food for thought:

An analysis published in 2007 by Basex Inc., a New York-based knowledge economy research firm, found that that 28 percent of a knowledge worker’s day is consumed by interruptions, resulting in a cost to business of $588 billion.

An information technology employee at Intel receives 350 messages weekly on average, according to a 2006 survey involving nearly 2,300 employees. On average, those Intel employees devote 20 hours weekly to managing e-mail. They describe 30 percent of incoming messages as unnecessary.

Six out of every 10 professionals (62 percent) report spending a lot of time sorting through irrelevant information to locate what they need, according to a survey of 650 white-collar workers by LexisNexis in December 2007. Even more professionals, 85 percent, describe such difficulties as a huge time waster.

—Charlotte Huff

Workforce Management Online, July 2008 -- Register Now!

Next Article: 5. Raising the Problem’s Profile
The newly formed Information Overload Research Group will promote research studies and delve into solutions for information overload, including technology tools and training strategies.

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