How Much is Information Overload Costing Your Company?

A blog post I wrote a year ago posed a question: “What’s so bad about information overload?“

An article I wrote for the September issue of Harvard Business Review answered that question:

A lot.

The article, “Death by Information Overload,” describes some of the ways information overload may be causing you harm: increased stress, impaired cognition, “information addiction.” (One study found that 11% of email users had tried to hide, from a spouse or family member, the fact that they were checking their BlackBerries.) The article clearly struck a chord, and people responded with their own personal tales of overload woe.

But most of us already know from experience that the abundance of information we enjoy today comes at a price. Less apparent is the tremendous hidden cost it imposes on the organization as a whole.

The possible link between information overload and suicides among employees at France Telecom may be spurious. But recent research indicates that information overload can have a negative effect on such activities as organizational decision making, innovation, and productivity. In one study, for example, people took an average of nearly 25 minutes to return to a work task after an email interruption. Another study found that time lost to handling unnecessary e-mail and recovering from information interruptions cost Intel nearly $1 billion a year. An article in the October issue of HBR, found that forcing knowledge workers to take weekly breaks from email and other work distractions improved performance.

Yet a surprisingly few companies even acknowledge the problem, much less make any attempt to do something about it. A handful of firms have taken small steps:

• Morgan Stanley is experimenting with ways (described in my article) to reduce the burden of email on employees.
• Nielsen Media Research recently removed the “reply to all” button from the company’s email system.
• A number of companies and academic researchers have formed the Information Overload Research Group, with the aim of mitigating the impact of information overload on employees and their companies.

Do you know of — or work at — a company that understands the cost of information overload to the organization as a whole? Are you aware of any innovative approaches companies are taking to tackle this problem?