Information overload in companies

So, what are the risks involved in over-consuming information?

• Decreased productivity

Junk information can effectively reduce the productivity of employees and therefore the company through 3 elements:

1. A decrease in our ability to concentrate and pay attention: every day, on average, the human brain is confronted with more than 6,000 pieces of information.
2. A more unstable memory: in Japan we speak of “knowledge hikikomori”, i.e. the individual is lost in “increasingly specialized information labyrinths” and as a result, the ability to memorize the right information would be affected.
3. A decision-making process degraded or even paralyzed because of the overload of “useless” information: the risk is to get lost in an “information cloud”. As a result, 3 out of 5 employees miss the information essential to their work every day.

4 out of 10 employees say they are “overworked” and 56% of them feel an increase in the volume of work (source: Caroline Sauvajol-Rialland).

• Loss of Intellectual Quotient (IQ)

According to a study commissioned by Hewlett-Packard, we are becoming less intelligent because of the excess information that our brains can no longer manage. This is due to the fact that the volume of information received by a manager is 10 times higher than it was 15 years ago (according to a OnePoll study).

Another study has shown that being in a situation where you focus on a task and an email is not read in your mailbox can reduce your effective IQ by 10 points. This has shown that the cognitive losses due to this digital multitasking are even stronger than the effects of cannabis use.

Key factors to help you manage infobesity on a daily basis

Tip 1: Well-reasoned communication

The idea is to use all this information in an intelligent way by setting up an adapted and well-reasoned collective communication system: i.e. by reducing collaborative overload. In companies it is necessary to know how to select and prioritize information.

For instance, well-reasoned communication is communication that gives meaning to work and restores a sense of pride in belonging to the company and to the profession.

Some examples to simplify this collaborative overload:

• Set up days or time slots without emails at the office
• Avoid “send to all” as much as possible to reduce the number of emails received by employees who would only be partially concerned by the information in question
• Disable unnecessary push notifications that only increase the weight of the information mass
• Impose and self-impose a disconnection between 9pm and 7am
• Participate only in meetings that are useful for your decision-making and projects
• Participate only in discussion groups relevant to your own objectives

Tip 2: Prioritize information to focus on the essentials

This method allows to obtain a synthetic view of the organizational state of information and to no longer waste time on information less essential for the company’s activity. The Eisenhower matrix provides a clear vision of the tasks to be delegated, deleted or simply carried out in order of importance and urgency. Time is optimized and stops the anxiety of endless To-Do lists.

Tip 3: Centralize information

First of all, you should try to reduce the sources of information by structuring, cutting, organizing and sharing those that are relevant and useful for your activity in a single tool. It is important to define the clear objectives you want to achieve for the success of your business and then accept the idea that you cannot see and process everything on your own.

Centralizing information means above all knowing how to empower your collaborators and give them autonomy. For example, you can integrate a solution that emphasizes collaborative work in the company to increase productivity by 20 to 25%: all collaborators are included in the process and are kept informed of the progress of the various projects; information is shared in the solution and everything is updated in real time.

As a manager, your role is to become a real support for your employees, relieve the pressure and less control to be able to delegate tasks to them. The objective is to get rid of what is less important to you and to accept the risk of trusting your collaborators.

62% of French employees express a strong expectation regarding the regulation of the use of digital tools – of a collaborative type – and even more of them are demanding this type of regulation among managers with 75% (according to an Eleas survey “Digital Practices in 2016”).

These figures reflect the informational urgency in which we live every day and the importance of knowing how to equip ourselves with the right tool to deal with it.

To go further, read the articles on The importance of having a good tool to manage your activity.