When staffers are inundated with more information than they need to get the job done, it can really hurt productivity. And that problem is affecting an increasing number of workers these days.
According to the “2010 International Workplace Productivity Survey,” by LexisNexis, 59% of employees said the amount of info they have to process at work has spiked dramatically since the economic downturn. In addition, 62% said the quality of their work suffers at times because they can’t sort through the info they need quickly enough.
Perhaps the most startling finding in the study: 51% of employees said if the amount of info they receive continues to increase, they’ll soon hit a breaking point where they won’t be able to handle any more info. Another 52% of workers said they feel “demoralized” when they can’t manage the info they receive at work.
The LexisNexis study was based on a survey of 1,700 white-collar workers in five countries (U.S., China, South Africa, The United Kingdom and Australia).
Readers, do you suffer from information overload?