Work and Social Media

From Chris Nerney:

The harmon.ie survey, conducted by market research firm uSamp, concludes that the “proliferation of collaboration and social tools designed to increase productivity is actually costing businesses millions of dollars per year in lost productivity.”

According to harmon.ie, “nearly 60% of work interruptions now involve either using tools like email, social networks, text messaging and IM, or switching windows among disparate standalone tools and applications. In fact, 45% of employees work only 15 minutes or less without getting interrupted, and 53% waste at least one hour a day due to all types of distractions.”

So what does it all mean? Well, it means…wait a minute, four of my Twitter friends just tweeted something. I’ll be back after I check it out…

OK, where was I? I was talking about social media or something. Oh yeah, harmon.ie concludes that wasted hour a day translates into $10,375 of lost productivity per work each year, based on an average salary of $30 per hour. For businesses with 1,000 employees, these interruptions cost more than $10 million annually.

Which, when you think about it…hang on, I’m being texted…

I’m back. Here’s Yaacov Cohen, chief executive of harmon.ie, putting this all in perspective:

“This survey paints a picture of a highly distracted workplace with a particular irony: information technology that was designed at least in part to save time is actually doing precisely the opposite. The very tools we rely on to do our jobs are also interfering with that mission. We’re clearly seeing what psychologists call ‘online compulsive disorder’ spill over from our personal lives to the work environment.

The biggest distractions, according to the more than 500 U.S. employees surveyed, are checking email (23 percent)…