CorpComms Magazine

Time saving devices, such as emails and instant messaging, actually cost companies with 1,000 employees more than $10 million (£6 million) every year, according to a new study.

Just over half of employees (53 per cent) spend more than one hour every day using social media tools while 45 per cent complain that they cannot work for longer than 15 minutes without getting interrupted by  emails or text messages.

The survey of more than 500 US-based employees, on behalf of social email software provider harmon.ie, found that nearly 60 per cent of work interruptions involve either using tools such as email, social networks and instant messaging, or switching windows among disparate standalone tools and applications.

For an employee earning an average of $30 per hour that translates into lost productivity of $10,364 (£6,400) every year.

The survey found that traditional activities, such as phone calls, talking with colleagues and ad hoc meetings, account for 43 per cent of work interruptions every day. But dealing with emails accounts for 23 per cent of all disruptions while updating personal social networking accounts takes up nine per cent.

Yaacov Cohen, chief executive of harmon.ie, said: 'Information technology that was designed in part to save time is actually doing precisely the opposite. We're clearly seeing what psychologists call 'online compulsive disorder' spill over from our personal lives to the work environment.'

Almost two thirds of those surveyed claim they use up to three additional monitors or mobile devices alongside their main computer screen, which leads to them wasting two and a half hours every week as they try to find documents in multiple locations. That adds up to 16.5 days every year.

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