7 September 2009 | A comment by Per Andersen, IDC Nordic

When working at your computer, you might often find yourself wondering whether it’s really that productive. When we accidentally delete an important file or the computer crashes before an important meeting, IT can feel like a waste of time, or a necessary evil at best.

But studies show that in societies similar to Denmark, IT is important for economic growth and productivity.  

A report from Statistics Denmark shows that job productivity in the Danish economy rose 37 percent from 1988 to 2000. Almost a quarter of this increase is because the workforce has had more IT available. From 1995 to 2000, one third of the total growth in productivity was due to the increased use of IT equipment, so IT is clearly becoming more important in increasing productivity. 

Of course this doesn’t mean that we can’t improve even more. We can! IDC has analysed how the work day of 700 employees in the knowledge sector is allocated. The results below add up to more than 37 hours per week as the activities of each individual employee can differ.

Average number of hours a week for knowledge employees:

• Email – reading and replying: 13.0 hours
• Searching information: 8.8 hours
• Analysing information: 8.1 hours
• Communicating with colleagues: 6.4 hours
• Project management: 6.2 hours
• Content and document creation: 6.0 hours

Source: IDC, 2009. N = 706.

It appears that emailing is the largest single activity for knowledge employees. But on the whole, the gathering, processing and communication of information takes up the majority of a knowledge employee’s working day.  

It is important that businesses focus on how this work can be improved for the individual employee. Particularly in these times where many businesses are under financial pressure and there’s a need to reduce costs – or quite simply there are fewer employees to do the same work.

And there’s no doubt that IT can improve employee effectiveness. This is emphasised by the fact that a great deal of time is wasted on working processes, an issue that IDC also investigated.

Average non-productive time in hours per week for an average knowledge employee:

• Searching without finding information: 3.7 hours
• Reformatting information from multiple sources: 3.7 hours 
• Restoring lost information: 2.5 hours
• Repeated publication of information: 2.1 hours 

Source: IDC, 2009. N = 345.

Improving the way knowledge employees use IT tools can save a significant amount of time. By substantially improving access to relevant information and the integration between applications, productivity can increase by at least 10 percent. That adds up to a lot of money for a business each year.

In many cases, it’s a matter of using the right tool for the process or actions. But let’s not underestimate the significance of improving the foundation for business decisions. The difference between good and bad decisions is a question of survival. 

It makes sense to invest in improved and uniform access to information across databases and applications (including email), and in better and more centralised content management and publication. By improving publication and information management, as well as enhancing working relationships, we can help businesses and organisations control their costs and increase turnover.

Control of information is crucial for a modern business – and not only because of legal documentation requirements. Content management, whether email, voicemail or documents, must be integrated to ensure it’s used properly. For example, as the quantity of information increases dramatically, the addition of meta-information will be a huge task for many organisations. Therefore it will also be necessary to automate this time consuming process.

The conclusion? Most businesses can still increase the productivity of their knowledge employees by using better and more integrated tools for daily routines and processes, such as emailing, information seeking, analysing and communicating with colleagues.