Most workers say they feel rushed on the
job, but they are getting less accomplished than a decade
ago, according to newly released research.
Workers completed two-thirds of
their work in an average day last year, down from about
three-quarters in a 1994 study, according to research
conducted for Day-Timers Inc., an East Texas, Pennsylvania-based
maker of organizational products.
The biggest culprit is the technology that was supposed
to make work quicker and easier, experts say.
"Technology has sped everything up and, by speeding everything
up, it's slowed everything down, paradoxically," said
John Challenger, chief executive of Chicago-based outplacement
consultants Challenger, Gray & Christmas Inc.
"We never concentrate on one task anymore. You take a
little chip out of it, and then you're on to the next
thing," Challenger said on Wednesday. "It's harder to
feel like you're accomplishing something."
Unlike a decade ago, U.S. workers are bombarded with
e-mail, computer messages, cell phone calls, voice mails
and the like, research showed.
The average time spent on a computer at work was almost
16 hours a week last year, compared with 9.5 hours a decade
ago, according to the Day-Timer research released this
week.
Workers typically get 46 e-mails a day, nearly half of
which are unsolicited, it said.
Sixty percent of workers say they always or frequently
feel rushed, but those who feel extremely or very productive
dropped to 51 percent from 83 percent in 1994, the research
showed.
Put another way, in 1994, 82 percent said they accomplished
at least half their daily planned work but that number
fell to 50 percent last year. A decade ago, 40 percent
of workers called themselves very or extremely successful,
but that number fell to just 28 percent.
"We think we're faster, smarter, better with all this
technology at our side and in the end, we still feel rushed
and our feeling of productivity is down," said Maria Woytek,
marketing communications manager for Day-Timers, a unit
of ACCO Brands Corp.
The latest study was conducted among a random sample
of about 1,000 people who work at least part time. The
earlier study surveyed some 1,300 workers.
Expectations that technology would save time and money
largely haven't been borne out in the workplace, said
Ronald Downey, professor of psychology who specializes
in industrial organization at Kansas State University.
"It just increases the expectations that people have
for your production," Downey said.
Even if productivity increases, it's constantly outpaced
by those expectations, said Don Grimme of GHR Training
Solutions, a workplace training company based in Coral
Springs, Florida.
"The irony is the very expectation of getting more done
is getting in the way of getting more done," he said.
"People are stressed out."
Companies that are flexible with workers' time and give
workers the most control over their tasks tend to fare
better against the sea of rising expectations, experts
said.
Businesses that have moved to 24-hour operations, bosses
who micro-manage and longer commutes all add to the problem,
they said, while downsizing leaves fewer workers doing
the work of those who left.
Finally, there's a trend among companies to measure
job performance like never before, said Challenger. "There's
a sense that no matter how much I do, it's never enough,"
he said.
