If ever proof was needed to justify the fickle nature of the human mind, this is it – it was not long ago that Facebook, Twitter and other social networks were being blamed for the decrease in office productivity because employees were wasting their time updating their statuses, leaving comments on their friends’ photos and status messages, and trying out the numerous applications that litter the online social world. But a recent study by an Australian university has suggested that Facebook, Twitter and the rest of their ilk can actually improve office productivity.

This guest article was written by Adrienne Carlson.  It expands on my interview with ABC-KFO radio and my article, “Facebook, Twitter, and Productivity.” 

Say what? Yes, you read that right – wasting your time online can actually make you more productive in the office. If you’re asking how, the study states that workplace Internet leisure browsing (WILB – another new acronym that we can soon expect to see included in the Oxford and Webster’s dictionaries) helps boost concentration and allows employees to focus better.

While it is true that a short break helps employees work more efficiently and boosts productivity at the office, this is not relevant when it comes to using the Internet for leisure activities. For one, this survey does not include people who are addicted to the web and who remain online all the time or for the better part of the day. And for another, when it comes to social networks, it’s hard to find the motivation to get back to work when there are more interesting things to be done online.

The Internet has redefined the word addiction and given it a new twist – what we earlier mainly associated with drugs, alcohol and cigarettes has now moved on to all things that are not productive (this again depends on one’s perception of and the meaning each of us assign to the word productivity) and that we spend way too much time on. It is worse than drugs or alcohol in a way because we don’t realize it is bad or addictive unless we are already trapped in the net.  

So while you may initially go online with good intentions – for example, you may need to do some research for your latest assignment – you tend to get caught up in the various email IDs you have, reading chain mails and forwarding them to your “friends”, playing Farmville or any other of the hundreds of thousands of applications on Facebook, or just jumping from one random site to the other without really doing anything worthwhile. And before you know it, you’ve lost track of time and your whole day has been taken up to wander aimlessly on the Internet.

So you can see how social networks could become detrimental to office productivity, no matter what the study says. Yes, browsing the Web for leisure could be a welcome break that may rejuvenate you and motivate you to stick to time management strategies, but only if you are aware that it could become an addiction and that you must have the determination to stick to your time limit and get back to work once you’re done taking a break.

This guest article was written by Adrienne Carlson, who regularly writes on the topic of accelerated online degrees.   Adrienne welcomes your comments and questions at her email address: adrienne.carlson1@gmail.com.

Has anyone described you recently as sanguine, phlegmatic, melancholic or choleric?  We may not use these terms as common descriptors anymore, but these are the personalities that Hippocrates categorized.

While it is important to recognize your own personality traits and those around you, it is also important to recognize communication styles.  The problem is that, while personalities are generally fixed, a person’s communication style can change with circumstances.

For a productive office to function at its peak, you need to:

1. Understand personality traits
2. Recognize basic communication styles of your co-workers
3. Be aware of circumstances that may temporarily alter communication styles

Modern communication styles are grouped into four categories:

• Expressive–high energy, big picture, enjoy heated or opinionated discussions
• Systematic–stick to facts and the small details, avoid conflict
• Sympathetic–all about people and building relationships, good listeners, do not like conflict
• Direct–to the point, big picture, managing lots of projects,

You often easily place  the people around you into one of these groups.  There are two challenges after recognizing distinctive styles in an individual:

1. How you adjust your style and your response to get the most from working with this person
2. How to recognize when a situation is causing that individual to respond in an uncharacteristic manner

Regardless of what terms you might use, a good manager may intuitively adapt.  However if you are finding that there is often more conflict than ideal for a productive environment, it might be good to review your approach.  With whom are you having difficulties?  Has anything changed?

Sometimes just a new awareness and acknowledgment can make the difference in getting things back on track.

In a world of distractions, what kind of work environment do you need to improve productivity?  There are constant debates about the value of cubicles and open floor plans versus enclosed offices.  Companies switch back and forth over the years, trying one and then succumbing to trends or complaints and reversing their layouts.

While there can be advantages to both, the challenges my clients face center on trying to focus and concentrate.  Business distractions for everyone include ringing telephones, dinging email messages, and drop-in visitors.  When you in a more open space, not only do you have to cope with these distractions, but you have to find a way to work through the conversations, phone calls, and traffic of others around you.

Advantages of cubicles or open floor plans:

1. Saving money by fitting more employees into less space
2. Increasing collaboration by quickly sharing ideas
3. Fewer status issues

Advantages of closed offices:

1. Limiting distractions for greater concentration
2. More space

Home Offices:  It is not just about big companies.  The same decision has to be made in a home office situation.  Do you have a blocked off room, away from family and the noise of household activities or do you have your laptop set up on the kitchen table?

Schools:  The school environment also faces these issues.  There were years when the open concept was in full swing.  You would have 3 or 4 classes spread out with small barriers like bookcases.  Each class might have 25 children in it.  It is hard enough to keep 25 students controlled and focused without them checking out what is going on in the other areas, especially if there was a “fun” activity with associated noise.

In my time management training sessions, noise is an issue brought up by participants.  There are some tools that you can use to cut back on this.  Try headphones or a white noise machine designed for cubicles to reduce much of the sound to a background drone.  Even in a “box” office situation, you need to close that door sometimes in order to be really productive.

Not everyone can thrive in the same environment.  Wouldn’t it be great if, when you joined a team, you were given a choice based on what works best for you?  Are you easily distracted or does a busy environment stimulate your thought processes?  Take away the status issue connected with a closed office and instead assign the spaces based on:

• Type of work
• Space requirements for your job
• Your personal style

If we all followed a common sense approach to email usage, productivity would jump and consequently so would profits.  The estimated cost due to email mistakes was calculated at $420,000 annually for companies with 100 employees, according to Debra Hamilton in her report, “Top Ten Email Blunders That Cost Companies Money.”

As simple as email is, we often rush through and forget the basics. There are two elements that go into using email productively:

A. Composition
B. Processing

A.  COMPOSITION

Divide your email composition assessment into three sections:
1.  Subject
2.  Message
3.  Tone

1. Subject.  Think of this line as a telegram.  How much information can you impart in six to eight words.  If there is an action required, note that in this space.  (”I need figures from you by 3 p.m.”) If you are replying and switching topics, change the subject line.
2.  Message.  Keep it short and state what you need.  If there is no response expected, say something like “Thanks in advance” or “No reply needed.”  That will cut down on those return messages like “Okay” that can fill your inbox.
3.  Tone.  Reread your message before hitting the Send button.  Then you can add the small niceties like “Please” and “I appreciate….”  Otherwise the actual wording may appear brusque since there are no external visual or auditory clues to convey your meaning.

B.  PROCESSING 

To keep email from interrupting you throughout the day, set up time blocks for processing.  The ideal would be twice a day.  If you feel you need to, check your inbox when you come in to be sure there are no emergencies.  Then, move on to other projects until your scheduled email processing time. 

If dealing with email two or three times a day is not realistic for your business, perhaps you could check it once every hour to be sure you are not missing any urgent request.  When there is no emergency, wait till your time block to continue working with the mail.

When you work in time blocks instead of multitasking throughout the day, you can be up to four times more productive.  The wasted minutes come from switching back and forth between diverse activities.

We all recognize that an outsider coming in to speak or train has a degree of automatic credibility.  Even if the Human Resources Department has someone who can provide information on the same topic, there is cachet in hiring an external source.

Since I am personally one of those outside people who are brought in to train departments in productivity and time management skills or present at association conferences, it is not in my best interest to discourage you.  However I do find it intriguing that there some of the people in my audiences have a good grasp of many of the techniques that I share.  Yet no one ever asked them to mentor others. 

One drawback is, of course, the corporate culture. If you are in need of help and they are designated to assist, you may be thinking that you are smarter than they are, you rank higher in the food chain, or you are equal so what makes them think they know it all. A barrier is erected.

When looking for expert help in an area, there are more indicators than just field knowledge that would lend to being an effective internal source of help.  In a recent article (Wall Street Journal, “Who Knows What?” by Dorit Nevo, Izak Benbasat and Yair Wand, 10/26/09), the following attributes went into evaluation of experts:

—25% Extent of knowledge
—9% Currency of knowledge
—12% Experience
—9% Awareness of other resources
—12% Willingness to help
—14% Communication skills
—19% Trustworthiness

There is always a need for outside experts and consultants, who bring in unbiased focuses and new knowledge, but with today’s tighter budgets, take a look within and see if you might also be overlooking resources within your company or within your association’s membership.

It is a common dilemma:  Should I work over the weekend so that I keep up, or should I take time off to maintain a work-life balance? 

The more frequent response seems to be, “Keep working.”  A survey from the Society for Human Resource Management found that 70% of workers go beyond scheduled hours and extend their work week into the weekend.  It is not always because the company requires it but because we impose these demands upon ourselves (50% of the surveyed).

However, a four-year study, published by the Harvard Business Review in October, gives support to the need for time off as a productivity tool.  A test was run with 12 teams at Boston Consulting Group.   Each group needed to take a planned time off during the work week.  The fact that it was a tough task to take even one weekday evening off from business and met with initial resistance from individuals is telling for our mental state. 

Results of the experiment included:

• Better internal communication
• Improved advance planning
• More focus on prioritizing
• More sharing of  personal lives
• A closer-knit team

The point of the study was to eliminate “bad intensity” in the workplace, defined by Harvard’s Dr. Perlow as having no time to completely escape from work and no feeling of control over the work.

Five months after regular blocks of time off, the consultants were more satisfied with their job and life in general.  Their retention levels at the firm were greater than those outside of the study.

In my recent article on 7 Steps to Stifling Productivity, one of the points to avoid is praising “busy” employees, including the ones who stay late.  Busy does not equate with productive, and staying late can mean that you were not getting work done during the day.  Better to praise the productive ones who leave at a scheduled time.

My time management seminars focus on the techniques of:

• Uninterrupted blocks of time
• Grouping activities to increase focus and limit multitasking
• Prioritizing tasks

If you are using effective time management techniques, including the above, you should be comfortable with blocking time off for personal activities so that you come back to work refreshed, with a better attitude and improved perspective on both the work and life.

Cross-training is a way of maintaining a company’s productivity levels. This applies whether you are a large corporation of a two-man partnership. Companies are starting to recognize some of their failures in this regard as they prepare for possible swine flu outbreaks. 

At a September conference held by the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy from the University of Minnesota, 81% of attendees said their greatest concern regarding a swine flu outbreak was employee absenteeism.

It is always a good idea to have more than one person, or one team, know how to perform specific duties.  Otherwise what happens when key personnel experience a long-term emergency.  Even worse, an employee can actually hold a company “captive” when he or she is the only one who knows something.

While it is sound business to ensure that every operation has more than one person or team with knowledge of how to perform the required procedures, companies often overlook this in the daily rush to just keep up.  After all, everyone already has plenty to do.

One company taking active measures right now is Hormel Foods.  Every Friday afternoon the various departments take time to learn each other’s jobs.

—There are long-term advantages to pausing for more side training.
—Emergencies are covered, and not just for the current flu episode.
—No employee is indispensible for the wrong reasons.
—A more globally trained worker is better able to assess situations.
—Workers may perceive more opportunities for advancement, building loyalty.

The excuse for avoiding cross-training is that it is not productive to take extra time for a company to impart information not directly related to duties.  However, short-term, it will hold back the panic of being stopped in place.  In a summer survey, the Harvard School of Public Health found that two-thirds of the businesses questioned said they would be unable to avoid operational problems if half of the work force succumbed to H1N1.

This is not to say that having to switch your role to fill in for an absent colleague will keep things running at the same level, if required for an extended period.  The key is that IT WILL KEEP THINGS RUNNING.  It’s the difference between slightly less productive and non-productive.

I am certainly not one who is looking for more bills to pay.  However that may be coming soon because some Internet providers are considering a move from a flat rate, which they feel is no longer realistic given the increasing traffic demands, to a pay-for-usage plan.

Although I am all in favor of saving money, when I read about Internet carriers who are considering switching to a fee for Internet browsing access, my thought is that this could be turn out to be a productivity booster.

The Internet by its very nature is designed to be a distraction.  Pages are crammed with boxes of information while ads pull your attention in multiple directions.  One link leads to another, and time flies by.

Suppose you had to be more conscious of how much time you devoted to online activities?  It is more effective to group tasks so that your brain is not forced to multitask, bouncing from one activity to another. For example, it is better to deal with email in blocks of time rather than letting it interrupt you throughout the day. Having to pay for access might encourage you to also set up blocks of Internet time, where you have a list or file for the sites you want to visit.

With a block of time scheduled and a list of priorities, you would become more selective in how you spend your online minutes.  If you applied this time management technique, you would not be overly punished by prices.

According to University of Minnesota professor Andrew Odlyzko, the average Internet user runs to about 15 gigabytes a month.  Compare this with some of the trial plans that are out there now:  150 gigabytes, the most expensive from AT&T (you are charged by the gigabyte for exceeding), equals 75 million emails or 30,000 downloaded songs.

This possible switch in payment methods stems from the federal government pushing to apply rules that require all Internet traffic to be treated equally, regardless of bandwidth consumed.  The companies feel that coping with the growth in demand and not having priorities is unachievable.  They are looking for alternatives. 

Even if we end up having to pay a bit more, there will be a return for our investment if we can use that negative to improve our personal productivity.

Want to limit how much you get done?  Work in a germy office and see how many ill coworkers it takes to affect your productivity level. 

It would be great to limit the areas of susceptibility but reality is that there are germs on every surface, not all of them harmful.  Most of the time we are not affected.  However with this era of swine flu it is a good idea to review the most highly contaminated areas.

In a 2006 post I wrote about “The Office Germ”:

“For all of your awareness, you may be completely ignoring your biggest germ zone, which is your desk area. According to a study by Charles Gerba, an environmental virologist with the University of Arizona, your work space may have 400 time more bacteria than the average toilet seat.

“This study had one group of office staff cleaning their desk with disinfecting towelettes every day while the other group did nothing. For the desks that were wiped off, bacteria levels dropped 99.9%. On the other desks, bacteria levels increased from 19% to 31% every day.

The primary culprit was the telephone, followed by the desk, water cooler handle, microwave door handle, and keyboards. Coming in with the lowest score was that toilet seat.

Beyond this area, for women, significant concentrations were in makeup cases, phones and purses, while men’s heaviest contaminated areas included wallets and hand-held electronic devices.

Not all clean-looking surfaces are really clean.  To avoid further contamination, use paper towels or disposable rags when cleaning up.  Keep that hand sanitizer close. (Sales were up 17% in September from the year before, so that is encouraging for all of us.)

You cannot completely avoid contact no matter how careful you are.  Clean the areas you can, and keep hands away from your face.  Cover mouths when coughing or sneezing, and hope that your office avoids the consequences of these little inhabitants.

 In today’s recession atmosphere, productivity is a keyword.   Here are seven ways to be sure you do not get the best from your staff:

1.  Value “busy” employees.  Busy does not mean effective or efficient. 

2.  Pass on all the extra work.  You cannot just delegate more and expect it all to be done.  Provide guidelines as to what is the priority work.

3. Ignore your own desk.  If the logjam is in your office, choose someone with good office organizing skills to assist you.

3.  Reduce training.  What better time to provide organizing and time management seminars than when you are expecting increased productivity?

4.  Hold more meetings.  Just gathering everyone together frequently limits the time they can actually work. 

5.  Do not consider outside help.  Even though the budget is tight, consider using temporary assistants for bigger projects.

6.  Stifle new initiatives.  Ask your employees to be evaluating work flow and providing ideas to improve the bottom line.  Employees need to know their ideas are valued and appreciated.

7.  Make sure everyone appreciates how lucky they are.  Workers are worried today.  Scared workers will be stressed workers.  Stressed workers get sick more frequently.  They are not productive then, and they will be spreading those germs to others.  Instead, stress the value of your current employees.

Robert Half International offers a free report on the “30 Most Common Mistakes Managers Make in an Uncertain Economy” in the areas of morale and retention, innovation and risk taking, productivity, and building business.