We deal with it every single day, from ringing phones to full in-boxes: information overload. In all its various forms, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to cope with this stressor in today’s digitally dependent workplace.

Internet connectivity can be a double-edged sword, especially when it comes to the workplace. Although e-mails are a necessary part of both internal and external communication, an overflowing in-box can leave employees feeling overwhelmed. According to a December 2007 Survey conducted by LexisNexis, slightly more than seven out of every 10 workers in the United States report feeling inundated.

Information overload can also have negative consequences for the company as a whole, especially when used to overly document and manage various processes.

“The problem is that between 60 and 80 percent of the processes that make a company run happen under the radar and are managed via documents and e-mail. Studies have shown that these ad-hoc, unstructured e-mail managed human processes are a key driver of information overload and a big cost in wasted employee time and lost opportunities,” Eyal Maor, chief executive of enterprise action tracking solutions provider ActionBase, writes at Financial Times (subscription required).

“The problem is compounded by the fact that these human processes are business critical ones that run from the strategic (executive management corporate decision tracking and follow-up) to the tactical (audit and compliance process tracking and follow-up),” Maor adds.

The use of e-mail to regulate human processes can lead employees to mismanage their documents, sometimes resulting in financial loss to the company. As technology keeps upping the ante with new ways to stay connected, employees are finding it increasingly difficult to disconnect for the sake of the task at hand — and the problem extends well beyond e-mail. Gloria Mark, a professor of informatics at the University of California-Irvine, tells Workforce Management that “e-mail is yesterday’s problem.”

Today’s workforce also struggles against “text messaging, instant messaging and social networking sites,” Workforce Management says. “What can be lost in the process is that magical super-productive, creative state — dubbed ‘flow’ by psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi — during which a computer programmer might achieve a coding breakthrough or a consultant hammer out an insightful report.”

So how are companies responding to employee information overload and its subsequent effects? The first step is recognizing that information overload is a real problem, regardless of industry, and that employees are growing increasingly disengaged. In the LexisNexis poll, of 650 employees from multiple industry sectors, 85 percent said that not finding the right information at the right time was a significant time waster, while 62 percent said they spent a lot of time sifting through useless information.

In an 8.89-hour average workday, employees report that 7.89 of those hours are spent conducting research, attending meetings and searching for documents, the survey continues.

To re-engage employees with their work and re-evaluate the manner in which technology is used to manage human processes, many companies are using different storage options to cut down on superfluous e-mail and the need to gather and track an unnecessarily large amount of documents to track a single process.

In addition, some companies now offer training programs to help employees manage e-mail and process tracking, and encourage employees to examine how their own work habits may be compounding the problem. Learning when and how to use technology and when older methods may be more efficient are also part of many companies’ responses to employee information overload.

Meanwhile, the formation of the Information Overload Research Group has caught the eye of companies such as Google and Morgan Stanley, helping spread awareness and strategies for confronting the issue in the workplace.

“I believe the key lies in providing just enough structure and process support to standard e-mail and documents, when needed, to allow human processes to be managed, but not so much as to strangle them. This user-friendly low footprint approach is the gist of the emerging technology of a ‘human process management system,’” Maor writes.

And although it may be hard to gauge employee productivity as it pertains to information overload, so far these strategies appear to be successful. “People tell us it works,” Amy Leschke-Kahle, the development manager of internal employee training at John Deere, tells Workforce Management. “I think you have happier, more productive employees.”

Earlier: Making Disengaged Employees Feel Valued

Resources

LexisNexis Workplace Productivity Survey
LexisNexis, December 2007

Staying Afloat in a Digital Flood (subscription required)
by Charlotte Huff
Workforce Management, July 2008

Dealing with Information Overload (subscription required)
by Eyal Maor
Financial Times, April 22, 2009

Workers Struggle with Data Overload
by Laura Palotie
Inc.com, Feb. 26, 2008

Cutting Through Info-Clutter
by Ed Sperling
Forbes, Jan. 12, 2009