Email Pressure Reducing for Office Workers

Today's white collar workforce appears to be handling email with a little less pressure than in the past few years. According to the results from this year's WhiteCollar Productivity Index (WPI), the only study of its kind providing long-term data on how people actually spend their time at work, there is a reduction in the time people are spending reading and responding to email during 2007 as compared to both 2006 and 2005.

According to Bary Sherman, CEO of PEP Productivity Solutions, "The WPI study indicates that America's white collar worker may be becoming smarter and more effective in their day-to-day routines. They appear to have a better grasp on how to use technology as a productivity tool and are getting more of the right work done in less time. We have seen a steady time increase every year since we started watching email in 2000. This year that has changed. It will be exciting to see how this trend plays out over the next years."

The WPI study generated serious interest from academia and organizations when it was first made public in 2005, presenting annual statistics collected since 1994 from over 3,200 employees (administration, staff, middle management and senior executives) in major U.S. companies representing a variety of sectors, including the manufacturing, automotive, finance, biotech, education, insurance, accounting and technology industries.

The core subjects measured by the 2008 WPI study are handling email, handling paper mail, attending meetings, working overtime, delegating responsibility, dealing with interruptions, looking for lost data, managing work backlogs and planning work.

The entire WPI, expressed in hours per week, per person, is as follows:

ISSUE YEAR 2006 / YEAR 2007 % change

Handling Email

9.4 hours / 7.3 hours -22%

Handling Paper Mail
1.2 hours / 1.0 hours -17%

Attending Ineffective Meetings
3.0 hours / 2.2 hours -27%

Working Overtime
5.8 hours / 4.4 hours -24%

Delegating Work
4.3 hours / 3.0 hours -30%

Being Interrupted
4.6 hours / 3.8 hours -17%

Looking for Information
1.6 hours / 1.3 hours -19%

Working on Backlog
3.0 hours / 2.2 hours -27%

Planning Work
2.0 hours / 2.1 hours +.5%

Source:
PEP Productivity Solutions, Inc. (formerly IBT-USA, Inc.)
http://www.pepproductivitysolutions.com/