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The survey of 500 international organisations shows that many of these interruptions are the result of collaboration and social media tools that were meant to aid productivity.

Traditional activities such as phone calls, talking with co-workers and ad hoc meetings still account for a large proportion (43%) of work interruptions, but the lion’s share (nearly 60%) comes from electronic sources such as email (cited as a source of distraction by 23%), switching windows to complete tasks (10%), personal online activities such as Facebook (9%), instant messaging (6%), text messaging (5%) andWeb search (3%). Respondents to the survey said that constant interruptions made it more diffcult to be productive (33%); meant there was no time for deep or creative thinking (25%); and contributed to information overload (21%), missed deadlines (10%) and lost clients/business (5%).

It has also had a damaging effect on manners, with two thirds of respondents admitting to interrupting group meetings to communicate with someone else digitally, either by answering email (48%), answering a mobile phone (35%), chatting via IM (28%), updating their status on a social network (12%) or tweeting (9%). Yaacov Cohen, co-founder and CEO of harmon.ie, said that in the interests of productivity it was essential for offce workers to control their

“digital addiction”.

“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,” he said.

However, there are signs that employers and employees are attempting to address the problem. More than two thirds (68%) of respondents reported that their employers had implemented policies or technologies to minimize distractions, while 73% of end users have adopted self-imposed techniques to help maintain focus. The most popular corporate strategies are blocking access to public social networks such as Facebook and/or other non-business websites (48%); tracking online usage patterns (29%); training (25%); deploying an enterprise collaboration and social platform that aggregates information in a single window (13%); and implementing No Facebook Fridays (6%) and No Email Fridays (3%).

http://distractedenterprise.com http://harmon.ie

People now spend almost as much time reading from a digital screen as they do from the printed page, thanks in part to the improved readability of screen-based devices such as tablet computers.

A Gartner survey of more than 1,500 consumers in the US, UK, China, Japan, Italy and India found that the huge majority of tablet and iPad users say they fnd screen reading either easier than reading printed text (52%) or about the same (42%). However, 47% of laptop users fnd screen reading harder than reading printed text, and 33% reported it was about the same.

Younger respondents were most happy with on-screen reading suggesting that the consumption of text on-screen will soon outstrip paper-based reading.

However, Gartner research director Nick Ingelbrecht said that the shift from paper to screen-based consumption is not a straight substitution of one medium for another “There are concerns that digital media will cannibalise print media, based on the general decline in newspaper sales and take-up of

online news services in many parts of the world, but the evidence from our research is that print and online are not generally regarded as direct substitutes by consumers,” he said.

“The survey results confrm that multichannel content distribution is essential for reaching consumers who are consuming near equal amounts of print and digital text. Content, publishing and media organisations should market the synergies of multichannel products to consumers, stressing the benefts of having both print and online access, rather than selling competing stand-alone products.” He added that consumers’ choice of medium tends to be dictated by the type of reading they do, which is something that hardware manufacturers must take into account when designing their products. “This means improving media tablets and screen readers to become more competitive with paper in terms of weight, form factor, screen resolution, waterproofng, ruggedness, easy highlighting and note taking. This will enable consumers to take and use their devices

at the beach, in the bath or out into the sun where they take their paper books, newspapers and magazines,” he said.

The report Survey Analysis: Consumer Digital Reading Preferences Reveal the Exaggerated Death of Paper is available on Gartner’s website at www.gartner.com/resId=1651116.

Good manners fall prey to digital addiction

On-screen reading catches up with the printed p

Almost half (45%) of all offce workers are interrupted at least once every 15 minutes, according to new research conducted by online market research frm uSamp (United Sample) for social email software provider harmonie.ie.

notebook computers. The Android 2.2-based device has a 7in screen, built-in camera and powerful video processor for displaying high quality movies or presentations. It has an RRP of £229. www.mybebook.com

Digital addiction undermines productivity

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