Drowning in droplets of data

People simply cannot afford to be held back by the volume of information when the current economic climate is so tough. Something as simple as searching for information can, at present, have a serious effect as businesses are looking to free up employees' time to be more innovative and productive in order to stimulate the growth that most are looking for in 2012.

Struggling to navigate, organise and digest

In fact, research recently conducted by One Poll for Mindjet, a provider of collaborative work management solutions that improve how groups of people work together, found that employees across the UK, Sweden and The Netherlands, specifically, are drowning in droplets rather than floods of data at work, and are struggling to navigate, organise and digest this collectively, which is costing businesses.

The study highlights that, whilst workers from the three countries might receive small amounts of data, when it comes from multiple sources it quickly becomes hard to manage, negatively impacting the business bottom line and making workers unhappy.

The average number of emails received each day might not be as high as previously thought, at 36 for the UK, but the survey has shown that one-third of these still go unread. Swedish workers, for the most part, receive around 30 mails per day, but as many as three out of 10 individuals do not read all of these. Individuals from The Netherlands are sent 33 emails per day of which one-third go unread.

Further results from the survey showed that:

• Brits attend one meeting, make five telephone or conference calls and, despite social media hype, just 20 percent spend any time on social networking sites during a typical day at the office
  
• Workers in The Netherlands receive an average of six phone calls, attend one meeting, spend approximately 65 minutes speaking face to face to colleagues (outside of meetings) and 11 minutes on social networking sites per day
  
• Twenty-five percent of Swedish office workers spend more than three hours per day in meetings or on the phone on a daily basis, with 75 percent of women and 65 percent of men feeling that the flow of emails and meetings is stressful.

These results echo email consumption: data even by the droplet still maintains a negative human impact and is cited as a cause of workplace unhappiness, with two-thirds (65.2 per cent) of British office workers, 57 percent of those in The Netherlands and seven out of 10 Swedish employees saying that the amount of data they are receiving negatively affects their job.

Employees not equipped to manage

The research, which surveyed 2000 UK and 200 Netherlands-based and Swedish office workers, has found that just a small amount of data can leave employees feeling overwhelmed because they are simply not equipped to manage it. It is the reason why more people are enjoying their job less and what's more, it is having a knock on impact for businesses.

The average UK office worker spends over 21 minutes a day, the equivalent of over two working weeks per year, searching for information he's seen but can't find - that's costing UK business GBP1248.51(1), which is more than R16 000 and organisations in The Netherlands are spending 1853 euros (almost R20 000) a year for every employee, based on the average wage.

Help employees manage data better

This research has shown that it doesn't take much to feel like people are drowning in data at work. It is costing businesses and affecting employee motivation, which is why companies have to encourage new ways of working and help their employees manage data better. Mindjet is helping them to do this by providing collaborative work-management solutions that focus on visualising data to improve dramatically how people can retain information more effectively, work better together, accomplish goals more successfully and be more productive.

Neurobiologist Mo Costandi explained why we're struggling: "We receive information from a huge variety of different sources, sometimes simultaneously, but the brain is not good at multitasking. When there are emails, documents, meetings, Tweets and telephone calls to deal with it can be very hard to assimilate all this information in a meaningful way. Visualising information could help us to see the bigger picture and understand connections between pieces of information, but the way we work doesn't usually allow for this and that's why we can feel overloaded and struggle to make sense of what we can process. We're only going to receive more information from more sources in the future so we have to get better at managing it - this is where technology can help, if used in the right way."

How well do you cope?

You can find out how well you cope with information at work by using Mindjet's online Data Mass Index Calculator.

Mindjet provides information mapping software MindManager, which allows you to capture, organise, plan, and act on ideas and information. For a free trial go to www.mindjet.com.

(1) Based on working 234 days a year with an average working day of 7.5 hours and an average salary of GBP25 900, source: Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings (December 2010), HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) and Pay As You Earn (PAYE) records.