Professors R. Kelly Garrett and James N. Danziger reveal in their 2007 study workers who frequently utilized IM while on the job reported less interruption than those who did not.
”The key take away is that instant messaging has some benefits where may people had feared that it might be harmful,” Garrett told Science Daily, a website devoted to scientific research. “We found that the effect of instant messaging is actually positive. People who used instant messaging reported that they felt they were being interrupted less frequently.”
The study, funded by the National Science Foundation and the Center for Research on Information Technology and Organizations at University of California, Irvine, concluded:
- Common Beliefs Flawed. While former research and hypothesis suggest the adoption of IM would reduce productivity as it opened users to more interruptions during work. Despite common belief that the addition of IM to phone, email and face-to-face conversations would only slow efficiency, Garrett and Danziger found IM was used as a substitute for the other communications mediums more frequently. In addition, while there were more conversations reported over IM, the communications were kept briefer.
- How To Efficiently Use IM at Work. Increasing efficiency through instant messaging, Garrett said, depended on how employees used IM. The most successful members of the workforce will use to IM to: check in with coworkers to see when they are available for face-to-face meetings; get quick answers to general questions; inquire about current work tasks; utilize features to convey their availability or use offline messaging so they can return less urgent message later.
- IM Allows For More Complex Problem-Solving. As subject users found IM allowed them to solicit answers to simple questions or to help schedule face-to-face meetings when coworkers or administrators were available, more time could be devoted to more complex problems upon using other mediums such as the telephone, email or face-to-face conversations.
The study measured responses from 912 people who worked at least 30 hours per week in an office setting, including a minimum of five hours of computer use each workday. These participants were randomly selected from 12 major metropolitan areas and agreed to take a telephone survey between May and September 2006.
