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Study Finds Instant Messaging Helps Productivity
MojoKid writes "Researchers at Ohio State University and the University of California, Irvine conducted a telephone study by
randomly surveying individuals employed full-time who use computers in an office environment at least five hours per week. They netted 912 respondents, of which 29.8 percent claimed to use IM in the workplace 'to keep connected with coworkers and clients.'
Neither occupation, education, gender, nor age seem to have an impact on whether
an individual is an IM user or not. The study theorizes that using IM enables individuals to 'flag their availability.' Doing so can limit when IM interruptions occur. Even if an IM interruption comes when it is not necessarily convenient to the recipient, it is 'often socially acceptable' to ignore an incoming message or respond with a terse reply stating that the recipient is too busy at the moment to properly respond." Also another study recently found that water is wet, and a third study found that most studies waste money.
So while you may dismiss this as the painfully obvious, at least I'll have something to shut down the baseless claims that a lot of good useful tools today "make us stupid." It's still possible for something to make us both more productive and stupid but at least there's some evidence supporting instant messaging in the workplace.
Waste of money because the sample size was too small? Maybe. Blatantly obvious? Not even close. I personally know several people at my company that still view it as a waste of time instead of a useful tool. It's sad that so many great software tools get bad reputations because there are fringe cases of abuse.
My work here is dung.
The only result of this study is the knowledge that a percentage of the people who use IM believe it to be "productive". It has no actual proof that the activity of IM actually increases productivity in a measurable way.
I've dealt with a lot of people who think IM makes them productive, and I tend to disagree.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
Sorry, thought you said "Massaging Helps Productivity".
I appear to be in the wrong room.
simon
Just because it's obvious to you, that doesn't mean that everyone knows it.
Hell - just because it's obvious to you, that doesn't mean it's true!
My Journal
I have speech and hearing impediments (born with them), so verbal communications in person and on telephone is sometimes impossible. IMs (and e-mails) are life savers. I am not sure how I would be able to work if I didn't have these technologies (same for the Internet -- addicting too!).
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
I have also limited checking emails to 3 times a day. If there is an emergency, there is a phone and you can stop by my cube.
these days they'll make study's that will prove just about anything just to get published or hawk a product.
Also another study recently found that water is wet, and a third study found that most studies waste money
/. had one too
:-)
those old online polls that showed a percentage of people did not participate in online polls, hey look,
http://slashdot.org/pollBooth.pl?qid=401 and 2521 people don't vote
Hell, I even IM the guy in the next cube when he's on the phone. It seemed odd at first, but for important issues with simple yes/no answers, it can be really effective.
So while you may dismiss this as the painfully obvious, at least I'll have something to shut down the baseless claims that a lot of good useful tools today "make us stupid." It's still possible for something to make us both more productive and stupid but at least there's some evidence supporting instant messaging in the workplace.
i no xactly wat u meen! pholks sa i'm stewpid for it an 4 posteing on sashdot! i haf to go bac and rite my web pag
if you only allow some users to be able to contact you, such as your team members. Otherwise it becomes a major distraction and a waste of time and energy. It's way too easy for people to contact you, say whatever they want without talking to you or seeing you, and keep the written trail to blame you afterwards. If you lose focus dozens of times per day just because it's too easy for someone to ask something that's not really that important, but since it's so easy to contact you they ask anyways....it's not worth it being online.
I like the idea of instant messaging but I prefer e-mail to IM. Reasons? Overuse of IM lingo, short answers to complicated questions and the non-business tone of the exchange.
Until you work for a boss who uses it to deliver every missive, task and piece of brain barf that he wants to spew upon his or her workers. My wife works for such a boss. The man IMs her and her team so many times each day that you would think he's an IRC bot that went insane and took over their IM system!
Where email is passive, and more formal, IM allows a boss to act like he or she can just sit there and chat at you all day telling you what to do. It's perfect for micro-managers. Where they used to be expected to write out an email with tasking, send it out and then expect a reply later, they can expect results right here, right now. The result is obvious: stress. Lots and lots of stress for the employees of a micro-manager with IM.
In my opinion, IM should be discouraged in the work place. If you want to send tasking, doing it by email or something formal like that. If you need to talk to someone in the same office, for the love of God, just go to their office and do it. If you're too busy to get up from your desk to do it, you're probably too busy to take time off to chat over IM. Yes, yes, there are exceptions, but generally speaking, that's true.
I disagree. I have a program that I made that automatically quantifies time spent in programs and time spent on work related tasks.
Over the course of a year my reports indicate the following:
IM almost always detracts from productivty becuase IM's either interrupted or shifted my focus to a non-working task, required status changes to prevent interruptions, and is often used for procrastination. This was the finding of a one-year quantification of my working habits using IM with clients on the same list as IM with friends. Even client conversations often got off task.
If you limit your IM to short work related need-only basis with no friends on your list at work, it is more efficient than calling and the IM logging functionality makes it easy to reference work. Using IM Logging for information (on trillians search interface) was faster than email lookup and desktop search). Small gain there.
Short Answer, for the majority of users IM will detract from productivity. If the IM environment is strictly controlled with no friends and co-works only IMing on a need-information-now basis, then IM can be a great productivity enhancment for short conversations (versus the phone).
Trying to install linux on my microwave, but keep getting a kernel panic...
Even if do quick glance to see who the message was from or what the first part of the message was you are interrupted.
However what happens most times is you get what seems to be a quick question, you answer then the person comes back a few mins later with a follow on, you answer, then they ask one more question. It would of been a whole lot better if the person had just called as the question and thier followup questions at one time.
Makes you wonder if this survey was asked by these people
I move around a lot every day, and my availability varies depending on where I am, and who is trying to IM me. IM's from a coworker or business contact are different than say, IM's from mom or a friend. I modded my IM client to change my status depending on where I'm at, so everyone I interact with can figure out whether or not it's a good time to ask me a question or just chew the fat.
I still occasionally get inappropriate messages, but it's pretty uncommon. Usually they're from someone I don't chat with often and they haven't figured out what all my statuses mean yet.
FYI the script is a cron job that runs every five minutes, and tries to figure out what my WAN ip address is (and sometimes narrows it down by LAN address too) and updates my status, assuming it's not set to something custom already.
Also, sometimes people have something they want to tell me but don't really need to discuss. When they see I'm busy they'll just IM me a one-liner with what was on their mind, ending with an indication that they are not expecting a reply. So at least for me, IM is extremely effective and efficient communication whether I'm at work or at home. It allows me to stay available to everyone without unwelcome distraction.
I wish I could do this with my coworkers' cell phones, omg so tired of a coworker getting continuous calls from relatives/friends while we're trying to get something done, HERE is the real problem!
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
I can't help noticing you don't have a study to back that up.
"The cup is in turn designed for holding hot or cold liquids, and has an open rim and closed base." --US Patent #5425497
I've found that IM helps me tremendously, however I know some of my counterparts find it to be inhibitive to their workflows. Coming from a technical background, I'm used to having many windows open at once and alt-tabbing constantly between them to get multiple things done. My favorite part is being able to communicate during conference calls, where a side conversation is neither possible nor appropriate. If it's a customer facing conference call, action items requested from the customer can many times be completed during the call or shortly thereafter, as the ideas are fresh in everyone's mind, and I can tie in people that may not be able to be on the call.
Since my jump to the Dark Side (Sales), I've found many of my coworkers are apprehensive to IM, as they're sales people who were forced into using the computer. Perhaps they cannot focus on multiple things at the same time, or they fear constant interruption. I see the most resistance to the A-Types or the obvious ones who are in the twilight of their careers and resist new technologies.
Sadly, my productivity is about to come to a screeching halt. My company recently announced the upcoming death of the Jabber servers and migration to Micro$oft Office Communicator. In my experience, anyone with this protocol has suffered dearly in regards to sharing links and having Micro$oft deem what is to be shared or not.
Now we need a study (sponsored by Sourceforge, Inc.) confirming that accessing /. and posting comments during your work time insanely increases productivity. My boss would definitely get a copy of such report.
So when does the study saying that surfing slashdot at work helps productivity come out?
I'd be really interested in seeing that one...
Oh crap, time to get back to work.
Would you kindly mod me +1 insightful?
I think, if you pay heed to what is going on, that the most productive people, are usually also the stupidest.
The hardest most productive animals are usually nothing more than what we term "beasts of burden" under the direction of an intelligent being.
Cattle can work hard and produce a lot... yet the farmer is smarter than them (and often eats them when they're no longer productive), farmers are productive, but the workers in the city are 'smarter' than them, because they eat what the farmer produces but work half as much to buy what the farmer works year round to produce. Bosses are even less productive than workers, but they employ workers and milk them dry, making bosses "smarter" than employees. BANKERS are even smarter than all of them, because true bankers do not work at all, and fleece entire countries. In fact, through inflation and debt instruments, bankers produce POVERTY, therefore "negative wealth", and yet they make a killing (literally and figuratively) running entire nations into the ground, with the nationals' own consent.
Therefore, lets not pretend that what makes you smarter also makes you more productive. Harnesses may not make horses and oxen smarter, but they certainly become more productive. Being a "good" beast of burden is NOT a result of tools that make one smarter, but of tools that make one more "productive".
" What luck for rulers that men do not think" - Adolf Hitler
http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol13/issue1/garrett.html
They compare IM users opinions with non-IM users on how often they get interrupted on a work task. 29% or so people use IM and it turns out they think they think they don't get interrupted as much compared to the non-IM'ers.
IM is ok, but unfortunately I also associate it with a lot of non-work related activity when I see some other people using it.
I can't believe so many companies have such negative attitudes towards IM.
Where I work, we heavily rely on it to communicate with various teams around the globe & each other. This is a shameless plug, but we heavily use this tool - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Office_Communicator and without it communication would be severely hindered. The way it plugs into your calendar, email and all things officey is pure gold.
Not to mention my fellow geeks i have on IM too I use for help and to help...without it, my life would be much much harder.
I think bosses need to wake up if they think IM drains productivity.
throw new NoSignatureException();
has not been invented. Not only does IM constantly interrupt your train of thought and derail productive activity, but it also sucks down minutes and minutes when a 15 second phone conversation would do.
Most technologies eventually find their useful niche, like text messaging being great when you're in a place where it's either too loud to hear a phone call or when breaking the silence would be rude. But IM, despite having been around since the earliest days (I remember using it with a friend in the early to mid-80's), seems to have persisted because it's what people do when they want to procrastinate.
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
Its 'THE Ohio State University' dammit!
IM combines the advantages of telephones with the advantages from emails. You are instantly available if you choose, but you don't have to and can reply whenever you want.
Open Source Alternatives
This is more of a survey than a study, isn't it?
I mean, they just asked people if it made them more productive. People aren't really going to have much of an idea about their productivity rates.
A "study" would be if they actually quantified and examined the effects on productivity with and without instant messaging.
For enterprises, instant messaging raises record retention and e-discovery headaches, just as e-mail does. --Ben http://hack-igations.blogspot.com/2007/11/instant-message-retention-e-discovery.html
Benjamin Wright, Dallas, Texas, benjaminwright.us
IM can increase productivity in ways nothing else can. Can it detract from productivity? Sure, but I could do that equally well without it (e.g. solitare, slashdot).
Democracy Now! - your daily, uncensored, corporate-free
Personally I hate instant messaging. I uninstall it if the network force installs it, and barring that, I disable it through any means necessary, and boy do I get in trouble with that.
My issue stems from a privacy angle and a productivity angle. I'm in one of those positions where (and I'm sure I'm alone here) I do all my work without any assistance because I know what I'm doing, and recent hires and offshore has no idea what they're doing so I receive 800 phones calls, emails, and IMs a day so that I can do THEIR work, in addition to all my work.
When I have a technical question about the work I'm doing, I generally look in the help files, look up the API in a programmers reference, query MSDN, or archaic eastern european websites for the answer. My "coworkers" would not only be useless to ask, but would actually give even worse information if I was to ask them. Call me an elitist bitch if you want.
When they don't know what to do (such as something complicated like trying to write a Sql statement that returns the date or write a bubble sort algorithm) I'm the first person to bother, because as we all know, the internet has no factual information on it, only porn and pedophiles.
If I use IM software, every jackass bothers me into the ground with inane, useless questions and comments, which do nothing but waste my time doing their work.
I tried to use the "flag" to show me busy, out of office, unavailable, in a meeting, or whatever, and then I get phone calls and emails wondering where I am, if I'm taking a sick day, etc.
Screw IMs. IMs work great for 1) unproductive people that want to bother others and be social rather than look up information on their own because they are lazy, 2) managers who want to electronically monitor someone realtime and stack more shit on their plate and, 3) the client who wants 300 status updates a day on some production issue, ignoring their place in the food chain and queue of workload.
It's easier just to claim the image is corrupt or it's "not working", and keep destroying it whenever the network reinstalls it.
I'm a satanic clam.
The type of work being done is a large part of if the IM is a good or bad thing. On a job where short, quick answers will solve an issue, it is fantastic. Tech support work is a prime example, especially if those using it are capable of multi-tasking enough to not only help other techs, but do so without slowing the flow of their own work. However, other lines of work can't get by as well with quick-direct communication. Legal work for example often will need to be focused into email, not only for the added detail that implys, but for record keeping and storage. In either case though, having IM avalible (if discuraged in some cases) is a useful tool... but like any tool it needs to be used correctly.
Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart, he dreams himself your master.
Employees use IM as a way to goof off. Employees use Web browsers as a way to goof off. Employees use ceiling tiles as a way to goof off. Employees use their imaginations as a way to goof off.
The problem in all these cases is not that employees have found something with which they can goof off. The problem is that your employees are bored and unmotivated. Seriously, most large employers have horrible working conditions and do little to motivate their employees. If they used profit sharing to make up a significant portion of their worker's pay, I bet you'd see a very different situation.
Personally, I've worked in some very good environments where IM was a great productivity boon. It was faster than e-mail but let us exchange text and images that avoided the ambiguity of a telephone call, provided a record of what was exchanged, and was a lot easier to manage with a dozen people than a conference call. Of course we were getting stock options and significant (5 figure) bonuses based upon how much profit the company made. Because we made our own hours and were motivated we didn't waste a lot of time chatting with friends and family instead of working.
We can do without your unfunny and snippy comments. Besides what do you actually know about working in a more traditional workplace? AFAIK you never have.
The slashdot editors continue to be a hilarious joke for all the wrong reasons. You guys have no idea what a parody of actual people who work in the tech industry you have become with your snide and quite out of date comments. It's like you guys are still stuck in 2001 and while I do quite enjoy the farce sometimes, others it just strikes me as sad.
Perhaps you should try hiring some editors who have actually worked in the tech field on things other than silly blogs or some open source project that was never completed?
--- I do not moderate.
...we turned on the webcams. Then it became Big Brother. No, not THAT Big Brother; I am talking about the TV show Big Brother.
1. AIM / MSN / Meebo / ETC
This kind of IM usage can be just as counterproductive as it is productive. This is the kind of IM that companies usually choose to block or disable where they can. With these types of IM systems, it is too easy to fall into using them to chat with friends at the same time as using them for legitimate business purposes.
2. SameTime
Sametime is generally considered a "corporate messaginge system." You set up an in-house server and it is used only to IM other people in-house. This form of IM limits the social aspect only to in-company chatter as opposed to anyone's friends on the web. This kind of IM implementation has been found to be MUCH more productive than using the big social ones.
Take a look at the alternatives:
Email: interface is poor for a conversation, more designed for sharing an entire thought process, story, idea, etc. Delivery has inherent delay.
Telephone: Interrupts other activities. Requires immediate attention or dismissal. People both feel interrupted when receiving a call AND feel like they are bothering people when they call them.
In-person: Interrupts other activities, requires full attention.
Instant Messaging: Can be immediately responded to or delayed as dictated by what else is going on. You can do other things (like work) at the same time. You can look up information relative to the conversation before responding (like putting somebody on hold on the phone). You can start a conversation without feeling like you are interrupting them.
Basically, I don't like to call somebody unless I have something important or time-critical to say. IMs are a perfect way to keep in touch with somebody without impeding your work.
I do this at home... when I'm puttering around and might want to be bothered, but only if it's extremely interesting, I put up some sort of quote or joke in an away message. If I don't respond, people assume I'm not at the computer. Current Away Message: I WILL DESTROY YOU PAUL MITCHELL
as noted elsewhere the article measured perceived disruptions, not productivity. Full text here (blackwell-synergy.com). It's from Oct of 2007.
The experiment is not not really controlled, and therefore cannot prove the causation that is implied by the headline. They call random people and ask if they use IM and then ask other questions. For it to be controlled (and to prove causation, i.e. IM helps productivity), they would need to first randomly select the experimental group and control group, and THEN have one use IM and other not. Since they don't do this, they only show correlation, A 3rd factor could have caused those users to use IM and to be productive. Interestingly, in the TFA, when they list the hypotheses proven, they are correctly stated as correlations (although not using that word), as in: "IM users report lower levels of disruptive interruptions than non IM users". That is a statement of correlation, not causation, as opposed to the headline of the article (and Slashdot's). I also agree with the commenters who point out 1) the definition of productivity is questionable and 2) It is based on their own assesment of whether they waste time with interruptions, not by being observed by the experimenters. All in all, not much is proven IMO.
wait a second... is water really wet?
I'm running a similar experiment in my company. My extra machine is a Linux box that I have set up an IRC server on. Right now I only gave perms to one team member I work with, and so far it's very useful. When things slow down and workflow is light, we might just chat about various things but we definitely use it for work-related tasks such as querying one another for info or for help, as opposed to spamming one another via e-mail all the time or using these dreadful phones.
The nice thing about this is it doesn't rely on any IM service and those of us wearing tinfoil hats need not worry about anyone snooping on the conversation when discussing work-related items which all fall under NDA.
Sounds like they just called and asked people of IM helps their productivity. This technique only shows that people /think/ IM helps their productivity. For all you IM'er out there, it doesn't. The only thing worse for productivity than IM is slashdot. So close your silly little window and finish one task before starting the next. If there's an emergency, well, the telephone's been around for close to a century now and verbal communication, the result of millions of years of evolution, is far more clear and concise than your silly little emoticons.
That's where I'm going when I graduate from high school. They told me they're a top 10 research university... THIS is MY kind of research!
This is a signature. Bow to me.
If IM is your only (or primary) means of communicating, that's bad. When it comes to communicating with someone remotely, I use three methods, email, phone, and IM. I use email for most communication since it is formal, asynchronous, provides time to actually think about what I am saying, and creates a useful record. If a dialog is necessary, I use the phone. It is quick, to the point, and when the phone call is over, its usually over. I only use IM when someone else IMs me. When they do, if it's a one line response I'll usually respond. If its more, I pick up the phone and call them.
I guess IM could make an office more productive, but from my experiences it doesn't. I spent more time in IM explaining everything I was doing to my project manager then I did coding. Yet, somehow it was my fault stuff didn't get done. I attempted to just ignore the messages, but then he'd get mad and walk over and ask why I was ignoring him. The answer I'm working didn't make him happy either. To make matters worse everyone was with in a 10 foot radius of each other.
"Ubuntu" -- an African word, meaning "Slackware is too hard for me". - stolen from Dan C alt.os.linux.slackware
It's easy to tell who the people are who don't get that "communication" is part of any successful work environment.
But instant massaging does!
and a third study found that most studies waste money.
Too true, and any introductory Statistics class will tell you that a phone survey, on it's own, is pretty much useless because your entire sample comes from willing participants in the survey.
You must be new here.
http://dilemma.gulecha.org - My philospohical short film.
A generalization of such as instant messaging helps productivity would be merely futile. I have seen many around me bluffing/chatting/gossiping about things distantly useful to them to increase productivity. Also on occasions the messaging becomes a working tool when your bosses are away on fields. So it actually depends on when and why you are using instant messaging to really claim about the increase in productivity.
There are also lots of studies that show that your IQ decreases for a while when you are instant messaging. That is because you are constantly interrupted and forced to react every few seconds, which apparently makes you dumb (don't think -> write). So this study is worthless...
Here be signatures
Everyone has their opinion as to whether IM is a good thing or a bad thing. Well, it's just like eating: Eating too much is a bad thing, eating too little is a bad thing. IM is good when it is used in a good way. In the IT field, IM can be an invaluable when working large projects where people are scattered all over the place. Responding to a system crash may occasionally need colaboration from other members. The phone absolutely sucks if you have to explain everything you are doing. With IM, you simply cut and paste and people see right away what you did. e-mail is too slow. In a production environment you want to get the server back up ASAP. Having a group of people standing around watching you type REALLY sucks.
So, IMO, IM is good at [my work] work. I absolutely HATE IM'ing with my son or daughter. Just pick up the damn phone and talk to me. In that case IM is very, very bad.