- Weather | Horoscope | Stocks
expressindia web
HomeBlogsCricketAstrologyShoppingTendersClassifieds OpinionsTravel
| Make this your homepage | Archive
Expressindia » Story

E-mails join cigarette, coffee runs as office 'timewasters'

Font Size -

Agencies

Posted online: Monday , March 10, 2008 at 05:58:09
Updated: Monday , March 10, 2008 at 06:19:18


London, March 10: E-mails have joined the cigarette and the humble coffee runs as the latest threat to workplace productivity.

Researchers have carried out a study and found that e-mails have gone from being a useful office tool to a curse that actually takes up huge amounts of work time, The Daily Telegraph reported on Monday.

According to the researchers, the average employee now spends an estimated 90 minutes to two hours a day wading through hundreds of messages, much of which is basically spam and junk mail.

The study by the Radicati Group has found that worldwide email traffic has hit 196 billion messages a day. It is predicted to reach 374 billion per day by 2011.

"Employees're now so deluged with messages that emails have become a broken business tool in urgent need of fixing. There's been no innovation to separate the junk letters from the real ones," Jason Preston of the Parnassus Group, a social media consultancy, was quoted as saying.

A related study by another research firm Telewest Business recently found that emails and telephone habits could reduce productivity rather than increase it and "men are the biggest timewasters at work".

According to the research, the misuse of telephones and emails at work was hindering office workers from doing their jobs, increasing bad habits at work and lengthening the working day.

Out Of 1,468 people questioned, the average time spent each day waiting for or chasing responses to urgent emails and on unnecessary emails was 42 minutes. An average of 27 minutes was wasted responding to voicemails or managing phone calls and 12 minutes was lost trying to locate colleagues, the study found.

Bookmark this Page
  • Digg

    On Digg, users share intersting online content by submitting links to the site. At that point, the Digg audience can vote on whether or not they think it is interesting. Articles with lots of votes, or "diggs," rise up higher on the site's main page and topical subsection pages. Another form of social sharing, this site also lets users categorize the content they are submitting to Digg and label it with descriptions of up to 350 characters. Digg users can also submit comments on each content item submitted to the site.

    To register, go to: http://digg.com/register

    del.icio.us

    At its most basic level, del.icio.us allows users to save their bookmarks online. Del.icio.us also gives users the ability to "tag" their bookmarks with descriptive category names. For example, someone who has bookmarked multiple Web pages that deal with the Washington Nationals baseball team could tag those links with any terms they want, like "baseball," "nationals," "natsfan," etc.

    As members of a "social bookmarking" community, del.icio.us sers can also see how many other people have bookmarked the same pages, and they can look at those users' bookmark collections to find other interesting online content.

    To register, go to: http://del.icio.us/register

    Reddit

    Reddit allows users to submit news articles and other online content to the site. Users also give articles a thumbs-up or thumbs-down. Reddit then uses those votes to build a user profile and to find articles to recommend to you. Users can also submit comments on items posted to the site.

    To register, go to: http://reddit.com/login

Rate this Article
0
Rating
Ads by Google
Post Comments
Name* Email ID*
Subject* Country*
Message*
Characters remaining
 
TERMS OF USE: The views represented here are not neccesarily endorsed by www.expressindia.com and its allied websites. All messages will be moderated and no message that has inflammatory, abusive, derogatory language or any language deemed unfit for publication by the editor will be displayed. Though it will be endeavoured that as many messages as possible be displayed, there will be time lag between the submission and publication of the messages. The website reserves the right to publish or reject any message.
I agree to the terms of use.
the importance of email with its negativity by mohammad jamil akhtar ansari on 10 Mar 2008

this is really an acknowledge fact that the email users have found that sending mail and as well as recieving mail is a wastage of time. but we cannot deny the importance of email as the fastest means of communication earlier sending a letter was thought to be the most hectic task, and to send a mail to any high profile person was thought to be the most daunting and we were skeptical, whether our letters would be accessible to that person or not, but email has made it quite possible, and in this world of fastness mobiles and emails have become an urgent necessity in most of the profession, so what ever may be the case it has to be accepted with its negativity.

Nothing new... by a_shurao on 10 Mar 2008

nothing new to this story..an age old legacy.. email junkie.. coffee crookie.. and cig bookie.. ;-)

Left suffering from 'Stockholm syndrome', sa...Govt will win confidence vote, corporate hav...Only 16 out of 39 MPs turn up at crucial SP ...Pick me or I will play for England, threaten...JMM to support UPA Govt in confidence vote: ...US Army to shoot live pigs to treat wounded ...
© 2008 Indian Express Newspapers (Mumbai) Ltd. All rights reserved
The Indian Express Group | Advertise With Us | Privacy Policy | Feedback | Work With Us | Site Map