Companies concerned with productivity should note that there are many, many attention-disrupting forces in the workplace. For large companies, an average worker might check email 74 times a day, and meetings may take up 15% of company time; for small companies, group chat (even with the app known as Slack) takes up significant company time also. The issue is that, while the average employee is bombarded with task disruptions, more and more tasks today require deep work- the kind of work that requires the entirety of one’s attention. Companies can combat these productivity hindrances in a number of ways, such as- setting limits on email-checking and meetings, setting quotas for ‘deep work’ time, and making asynchronous communication (communication that does not expect immediate response) the default.
Key Takeaways:
- Workers today are very distracted and have a hard time staying focused on their work.
- Email is the number one distraction. But their are other distractions such as social media, etc.
- Companies can ask their employees to set aside certain times of day for answering email and do other things like making lists of tasks they want to accomplish to help them focus
“It’s not just productivity that takes a toll when workers are constantly interrupted.”
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