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.

Not For Me

[BountyX]

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).

Reference to the original report

[edderly]

http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol13/issue1/garrett.html [indiana.edu]

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.

Re:Not So Obvious to Many in Corporate America

[jeiler]

Have you tried using IM with other developers who are more interested in developing than goofing off?

Actually, no--I've used it in in-house support and coordination until management blocked the server domain.

...we have a forum where people can share their own experiences....

That's the classical definition of "Anecdotal evidence," Fic. Great way to share experiences and advice--not so great way to generate statistical information.

I personally want to set up an in-house Jabber server for communication within our IT department. Having posts like the GGP calling abuse "fringe cases" would be an excellent argument to make to my bosses, but they want hard facts and figures. If those can't be had, then don't go waving around claims that abuse happens only in "fringe cases," and don't go touting anecdotal evidence as anything remotely useful to support such claims.

Re:Not So Obvious to Many in Corporate America

[Martin Blank]

I've used it in in-house support and coordination until management blocked the server domain.

The reason that it's often blocked -- and why it's officially blocked where I work -- is because of regulatory concerns over communications that have to be monitored. I've proposed a couple of solutions ranging from Microsoft LCS to Facetime's IM proxy/monitor to allow the environment to get the benefits of IM while covering the lawyers' concerns over risk. I've considered Jabber, but I have enough to do without being the only one available to support an IM server (even if it is relatively hands-off).

However, money is tight (we're a local government in California), and the chances of this happening are slim.

Re:Not So Obvious to Many in Corporate America

[jeiler]

We're a non-profit in the American south-east--and looking at much the same situation. For us, we also deal with HIPAA laws, which is one reason I was looking at Jabber. Theoretically, we would control the server, and no out-of-house traffic would be necessary.

legal records

[Benjamin_Wright]

For enterprises, instant messaging raises record retention and e-discovery [blogspot.com] headaches, just as e-mail does. --Ben http://hack-igations.blogspot.com/2007/11/instant-message-retention-e-discovery.html [blogspot.com]

Re:It's great for productivity

[cptnapalm]

E-Mail is not that great either. Where I work, there are only about 15 or so employees, but of course (this is government) there are three managers. My desk is on everyone else's way to the kitchen; this is important.

My main boss, who spend her day in her office writing e-mails, is so non-confrontational that she will e-mail my immediate boss to ask for me to do something. My immediate boss, who spends all day in her office 15 feet from me writing e-mail all day, will then e-mail me. Before I get the e-mail (its webmail, so have to actively check it), both of them will have walked past me at least 10 times.

They will inevitably complain that I don't check my e-mail often enough.