Why You Can't Get Any Work Done

Workplace distractions cost U.S. business some $650 billion a year. Here's how managers can keep employees focused

by Emily Keller

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Sly Kodrin, vice-president for operations at a hinge manufacturing company in Alliance, Ohio, likes to maintain a shop floor that balances passion with productivity, allowing his 75 employees to listen to music and socialize, as long as it does not interfere with their work.

But when a stamping press operator brought golf clubs to work one day and began swinging at rolled-up work gloves while he was in charge of an automatic stamp press, Kodrin's line had been crossed.

"Most people, I tend to believe, thought it was funny at first," Kodrin says about the incident, which rose above the ordinary distractions of equipment noise, weather, blackouts, and news of the day.

But the humor dissipated quickly, and Kodrin sat the employee down, asking him what was needed to reenergize him about his work at Marlboro Manufacturing. The two were then able to put the incident behind them.

Cracking Down on Goofing Off

In a work environment where digital and cellular transmissions pile another layer of distractions on top of traditional horseplay on the shop floor and water-cooler gossip at the office, some distracting employees have not been so lucky. In fact, more and more businesses would be better cracking down on such distractions. It is estimated that American businesses lose around $650 billion a year through workplace distractions, according to Jonathan Spira, chief analyst of Manhattan consulting firm Basex, who authored a report called "The Cost of Not Paying Attention: How Interruptions Impact Knowledge Worker Productivity."

Bruce Lynskey, a former marketing director for technology company Wellfleet Communications , once fired a middle manager for spending an estimated 40% to 50% of his time wandering around the office disturbing other employees, surfing the Web, paying bills, and reading industry magazines.

"It's nice to keep up with the industry, but I think you should do that on your own," says Lynskey, who teaches a course on managing fast-growing businesses at Vanderbilt Owen Graduate School of Management in Nashville, Tenn.

Experts say that goofing off at work is rare, but more routine distractions can also have a detrimental impact on productivity.

More hours in the day

Chuck Martin, president of NFI Research, a data analysis firm that tracks business, management, and informational technology trends, says work-related distractions like e-mail, company crises, and interruptions by co-workers are so common that 46% of business leaders arrive at work early in search of solitude. But their peace is often disrupted when their employees follow suit, seeking the boss's attention early in the morning or late in the day because there is less competition for it, says Martin, author of SMARTS: Are We Hardwired for Success? "What that does is it destroys work-life balance," Martin says. "They're basically extending the hours of the day."

Martin argues in his book that the key to improving an employee's focus and productivity is acknowledging his or her strengths and weaknesses according to a set of 12 cognitive functions, including time management, stress tolerance, planning/prioritization, and flexibility. Those skills are generally unchangeable in adulthood, Martin says, cautioning managers to exercise tolerance for behaviors that may seem unnatural to them.

"Whether you have high or low distractibility depends on how neurons fire in your brain," says Martin. "It's like your height: You can't really fix this in people but you can address the biggest problem or two that it causes, and the primary way is to modify their environment."