Employees Spend 28% Of Their Time On Email

Sites include mckinsey.com . Published on August 16th, 2012. Written by Anthony West.

Email, like Facebook, can be very addictive. A recent study into Email’s impact on the workplace environment makes for not so pleasant reading for employers.

According to data gathered by McKinsey Global Institute and International Data Corp., employees spend around 28% of their time checking and reading emails. That amounts to more than 25% of productivity lost each day per employee—clearly not good news for businesses owners—especially those who rely on workers to be attentive and engaged for most of the working day.

The study also had some interesting recommendations, one of which being the suggestion that employers can increase productivity by allowing access to social networking into the business communication. Mckinsey found that by doing so, more than 7% to 8% of productive time would be freed up for other tasks.

The findings of the study are not particularly surprising. One company in France several months ago took the bold step of banning email all together. The company’s CEO felt that it was the only way to increase productivity and reduce the time employees spend checking email. In that instance, an internal messaging board system was setup to replace the communication void left by email.

Studies and experiments are continuing but it is safe to say that right now, email in the workplace is becoming a menace to profits.