Chapter 14
Information overload
Information overload occurs when the amount of time required to read and process incoming information exceeds the amount of time available to the individual for this purpose. Business correspondence, junk-mail, telephone calls, meetings, memos, faxes, newsletters and ad hoc conversations on the way to the vending machine, have always been plentiful in keeping the average worker occupied (or distracted?) even before the advent of Internet technologies in the workplace. If it was a straightforward case of these new technologies replacing their conventional counterparts then the results of this transition may not prove to be such a problem. Unfortunately, like most changes in work-processes, there is an extended period of transition as the new process becomes the norm. In the meantime, until the ubiquitous virtual and paper-less office arrives, this new influx of information is added to the existing forms of information coming into our working environment.
Despite these issues regarding workload it is easy to see why people have readily accepted the technology. Email has revolutionised the way employees can now communicate, enabling them to work flexibly, communicate and gain access to customers, suppliers and fellow employees alike. The way in which email can transcend bureaucratic and hierarchical structures in an organisation to speed up business processes lends itself well to the flatter and more organically structured organisation that has been emerging over recent years.
A report by Ferris Research (2000) entitled, Quantifying the Productivity Gains of Email claims that productivity gains of 15 percent are achievable through the use of email over traditional forms of office communication.
‘Faster business cycles and improved decision-making are important benefits to an email-based office that are not readily quantifiable’, suggests David Ferris, president of Ferris Research and further comments. ‘If you ignore the intangible benefits and focus on the quantifiable benefits alone, such as time saved compared to processing faxes, filing documents, and playing telephone tag, you can document that email introduces clear, substantial cash savings’.
The study, based on information from 29 organisations, claims that gains for the average office user due to the use of email are 381 hours or $12,919 annually. However there now appears to be a plateau where this productivity peaks. If the influx of this information is not kept in check productivity can quickly nosedive as it takes a psychological hold on office workers. The Ferris Research estimates that losses incurred as a result of email use are 115 hours or $3919 annually.
The ease with which vast amounts of information can now come flooding onto the desktop can have a serious detrimental effect on the organisation and employee in two ways:
- a) firstly, the productivity of the employee can be dramatically affected because of the nature in which digital information distracts the individual from doing their core job function and more importantly;
- b) the stressful nature of trying then to catch up with their day-to-day critical remit can have a very serious effect on the health of the employee
Reuters, the news agency, claim in their ‘guide to good information strategy’ that:
‘In the UK alone, information overload contributes up to 30m working days a year lost through stress-related illnesses at a cost of some £2 billion’
(Reuters, 2000)
The guide also claims that constant exposure to information overload leads to a condition termed Information Fatigue Syndrome (IFS) which can often be observed in the form of the following symptoms:
- an inability to make decisions or cope in other ways
- irritability and anger
- pain in the stomach and muscles
- frequent feelings of helplessness, listlessness and lethargy
- inability to sleep at night, waking in the small hours with a sense of panic
- loss of energy and enthusiasm for hobbies or leisure activities
The average amount of time that users spent dealing with their electronic correspondence two years ago was approximately 90 minutes per day. A recent survey by The User Group‘(Guardian, 2000) claims this has risen to almost three hours a day and if left unchecked could rise to four hours a day. The survey highlights that the bulk of the problem comes not from junk-mail or ‘spam’ but is created by employees in the organisation. It is thought that this apparent fury of activity has little to do with conscientious workers nurturing a well-informed community but purely a form of electronic politics with originators of emails sending copies to people in order to ‘cover their backs’ or impress managers who do not need to read them. This then creates even more never ending ‘loops’ of token comments in an attempt to display equal or competing levels of dedication. Meanwhile, the unwitting manager is forced to observe a game of email-tennis.
The survey by The User Group identifies the following problematic areas associated with overload and ranked in the following order:
| • | Copied mail | 30% |
| • | Junk mail | 24% |
| • | Internal lists | 18% |
| • | No training | 16% |
| • | Private mail | 12% |
| (Business & Technology, 2000) | ||
Unfortunately, this kind of counterproductive use of the technology is unlike junk-mail in the sense that ‘spam’ can be filtered straight into the ‘recycling’ bin. Putting such blocks on correspondence from your work colleagues however is fraught with danger. It is likely that sooner or later a critical piece of information will be missed and not acted upon.
Another form of email misuse, but this time far more innocently intended, is received from the ‘virus warning do-gooder’.
The ‘virus warning do-gooder’ phenomenon is an issue that is worth raising here especially as organisations often turn a blind eye to the problem. Yet, this is a problem that can cost more in resource terms than the very same security breach about which the ‘forwarder’ of the email is trying to warn you. What are they trying to warn you about? More often than not, it is a hoax virus to which they refer. The hoax virus can quite easily be more prolific than a genuine virus. Why?
- a) any prankster can write a virus warning - no programming skills are needed - only an ability to type!;
- b) well-meaning friends, relatives and colleagues new to Internet technology are only too happy to spread the warning on to others
If you ever received a hoax virus-warning take a look at the ‘cc:’ list if you have not done so already. Even if you refrain from passing on this message it is likely a significant number in this list have already passed the message on again, only this time to another dozen friends, colleagues and relatives in their address book. This pyramid networking effect can often use up valuable resources as these messages do the rounds. Here, an effective information security policy can alleviate this problem through educating users. Although training individuals to recognise potential hoaxes or compare them to a list of known hoaxes held on the Intranet may be a little ambitious, merely educating the user to forward the warning to the IT department will help significantly reduce the negative effect this phenomenon has on the organisation.
So how can these problems be abated?
Below are some tips or methods for alleviating information overload on the Intranet and some useful measures that may be employed in any related educational or training provision.
Email filters
Most email software packages allow the user to filter or ‘screen’ messages based on a number of criteria. Based on author, subject, size or whether they have attachments etc., messages can be filtered into specific directories, forwarded on to relevant people or deleted. This is specifically useful if you subscribe to any newsletters or mailing lists that do not require your immediate attention, allowing them to be automatically steered into dedicated folders for you to read at a more convenient time. The use of this system can almost be seen as an automatic document control or management system allowing the user not just to get a clearer picture of what reading should be given priority, but also provides a means of easily finding the information at a later date.
Other related uses include:
- Setting rules for personal messages to be filtered into separate folders
- Filtering messages from your boss
Many mailing lists now have protocols for the syntax used in subject headings so as to allow users quickly to identify what is and is not relevant to themselves as they appear in their respective ‘in-trays’. These may include ‘conference notices’ or ‘job vacancies’ that can therefore be deleted instantly or diverted into specific folders. Try to encourage your work colleagues to adopt similar practices - this practice is especially useful for saving time in organising similar documentation relating to projects etc.
Rerouting ‘spam’
Spam is the electronic equivalent of junk mail and is so common that it is generally accepted as an occupational hazard these days. However, there are measures to guard against this problem turning from an occasional nuisance to becoming a frustrating and time-consuming pastime, trying to sift through what is junk and what is business related. Things to be wary of that might increase junk-mail from a trickle to a flood are:
- Volunteering your email address to a commercial or shopping site asking to be kept informed of special offers
- Subscribing to free newsletters or journals (either on-line or in print-form) and providing your email address; take note of the disclaimers at the bottom of these ‘sign-up’ sheets - invariably there are always ‘tick boxes’ asking you if you would wish to have your details forwarded to third parties or not!
If you are continuously receiving unsolicited email from a known source, simply set up a filter to direct the message straight into the recycle bin. However, if you are receiving multiple occurrences of messages with the same subject, but from a range of spurious sources, set the filter to trash anything with that particular heading i.e. ‘Get a free degree today’ or ‘Your loan has just been approved’ which are just a sample of unsolicited messages that constantly do the rounds.
Unsubscribe to services and updates
One of the consequences of email is the way in which it is all too easy to see a newsletter, think that it may be interesting, subscribe and then find a few weeks or months down the line that you are receiving six similar newsletters or electronic alert bulletins - none of which you have the time to read! It would be fine if we all had time to read this information but, think realistically, do you really need this information?
Likewise think about mailing lists as well. Is there really enough useful information that you are receiving via this service to warrant checking through the whole contents?
It could very well be the case however that once in a while, useful or critical information is provided in these sources. If there are particular services that are of general interest to everyone in your section or department is it possible to nominate specific individuals in your section to subscribe to these items and then forward any relevant information to others if it is relevant?
Things to watch out for before you send
Check the CC: list. Is it necessary to email all the people listed? Even if you think there is some Machiavellian benefit from ensuring that every manager up to Chief Executive status sees what a wonderful hardworking and conscientious individual you are, personal email policies such as this can soon backfire. It is just as likely that these emails will irritate the very same people you are trying to impress and every chance that you will receive several token replies that you really do not need to spend time perusing.
Try also to refrain from forwarding chain letters, jokes and urban legends.
If you are about to send an email with a file attachment, is it really necessary? Attachments can rapidly use up memory space allocations, both in your sent directory and the in-box of your recipient’s in-box. Publish it on the Intranet if it isn’t there already and provide the URL for it. This is also good document management practice as the file your recipients will be accessing will always be the most current.
Ignace Direckens, the ICT Manager for VDAB (the Flemish Service for Employment Consultancy and Vocational Training) acknowledged (Chapman, 1999) that this was a problem in their own organisation when their groupware system became too popular. As a result of its impact everyone started to email documents to each other causing bandwidth, document control and overload problems. The solution for the organisation was to place all central policies and procedures on a central Intranet to allow people the option to decide when and whether this information was relevant to them.
This is also especially considerate in respect of remote workers who may otherwise have to download several large files over a slow modem connection. This policy will enable them to download files at their own convenience and give them the choice of determining whether the files are of interest.
Check your email periodically instead of becoming a slave to the alert ‘chime’ for new mail. Often so-called urgent emails and related issues resolve themselves in the interim.
Training
The points covered so far may go a long way to helping alleviate information overload problems at both an individual level and organisation-wide level especially if seen to be sanctioned by the organisation. Such approval by the organisation would be both visible and extremely useful in its own right if these issues and recommendations are provided in relevant training and induction sessions.
These measures become even more effective when they are adopted as corporate-wide policy. The Ferris Research report (Ferris Research, 2000) shows that companies, which encourage employees to limit the personal use of email, shorten distribution lists and reduce indiscriminate copying, can achieve measurable increases in productivity rather than declines. The report claims that the productivity gains of 15 percent mentioned earlier in the section can reach 20 percent if management takes simple steps to train workers in effective use of email, including setting policies and culture to discourage personal use and excessive distribution.
It should be noted that this information overload might not just arise through information ‘pushed’ at the individual through such technologies as email. It can also be partly self-imposed at any time when the employee is trying to retrieve or pull information from a sea of other irrelevant information.
Careful use of the World Wide Web and refining of search and retrieval strategies can also go a long way to helping alleviate personal information overload.
Selective browsing
Ensure your bookmarks are well organised. Spend five or ten minutes creating folders for your bookmarks. Don’t convince yourself that you will do it later. This small investment in spending your time organising your bookmarks can pay dividends in the long run, enabling you quickly to find them in the future, and prevents the need to research and re-bookmark the locations of interesting sites.
Save time by refining your search criteria when using search engines. Whether you are using search engines on your Intranet or on the Internet, ten minutes spent reading the help files provided with search engines will save you hours of searching in the long run.
Despite the access to the Internet becoming ever more accessible in even the least technologically advanced countries in the world, the USA is still the world’s principal user of the Internet. With the East Coast five hours behind GMT and the West Coast eight hours behind, access speeds to the Internet in Europe slow down dramatically from lpm in the afternoon onwards. This may sound obvious to seasoned surfers but will come as a revelation to some new graduates or staff previously denied access to the Internet, and should therefore be part of any induction and educational programme.
Unified messaging (UM) also offers a means of alleviating information overload problems. UM provides a standard Graphical User Interface to all forms of digital communication including fax, voicemail and email. However such claims are still relatively unfounded as yet due to the limited number of vendors and their recent arrival on the market, which leaves the technology relatively unproven.