The Risks of Information Overload in the Workplace

With the pandemic’s perceived closure, everything can go back to normal — right?

From inflation causing skyrocketing prices, to increased geopolitical tensions impacting supply lines (and lives), and, oh, Monkeypox making an appearance on the global stage, there’s still plenty to be worried about. And when people are worried, they consume information in an attempt to allay those fears. Or at least I do; don’t you?

For hybrid workers, bouncing between at-home and in-office desks, a return to the office was supposed to signal a return to how things were before. From watercooler chats to hitting pause on Zoom meetings, it was finally meant to a return to calm, to less, to some margin of relaxation.

And yet…

Today, like every day, 5 quintillion bytes of information will be created; in 2020, 1.7 megabytes of new information is minted every second for every human on earth; yet only 0.5 percent of all data is ever analyzed or used for decision making.

How Does Information Overload Impact Employee Productivity?

Many employees report that their productivity is in a data-induced death spiral — whether remote or at the office. According to a recent report in Tech Republic , a survey of 2,000 remote U.K. workers showed that 18% suffered from “information overload,” (also called “data overload,”) and 8% were overwhelmed by too much data and too many apps they’re meant to check each day.

But these frustrations are not limited to at-home workers. According to an article posted on WorkZone ‘s website, a study of managers in the U.S., U.K., Hong Kong, Singapore, and Australia yielded that 25% of workers reported information overload was leading to poor health and significant stress; 33% of managers also reported poor health due to a large amount of data.

Digital Data Tools Drowning Employees

So, what is the source of this soul-sucking, efficiency-crushing, progress-stalling data? The very companies that employees serve. That’s right — the digital data tools that employers think make employees nimbler, better informed, and more effective are doing the exact opposite. Consider a 2022 workplace relevance report from Coveo; the results revealed myriad alarming effects of information overload, including:

• Workers spend 3.6 hours daily sifting through a large volume of data for information needed to do their jobs — which in a workforce of 5,000 translates to 4,716,000 work hours wasted every year. IT workers spend a whopping average of 4.2 hours per day looking for information
• 60% of employees have to search within four or more data sources every day for the information they are looking for. An additional 18% hops between seven or more sources daily
• 50% of the employees now don’t know where to start their information hunt
• 41% of all information provided to employees is not relevant information to their specific job role
• 81% reported that they were unable to find information in critical moments
• 16% of the respondents are ready to quit due to data-finding frustrations
• Nearly 50% are less engaged in their work and feel less confident in their daily activities

When Coveo looked at the data collected in detail, it found workers were unsure if the incoming information they had was out of date (39%) accurate (25%), or even allowed to be shared (25%).

In short, people are overwhelmed, less engaged, and less confident. And literally ill.

The infrastructure that organizations build to make reams of information available in a few clicks, empower knowledge workers by providing access to information and data, and enable them to work from anywhere — unfortunately, are not always helpful. In fact, these infrastructures are adding to the toxicity of the information age.

Information overload paired with the perpetual barrage of developments surrounding the pandemic created a significant sense of mental fatigue for employees across the globe.

Information Overload = Information Anxiety

How much is this because people are stuck in their own heads ruminating? And how much is the stress of too many options?

And what happens when both phenomena work in tandem?

According to a recent article in Psychology Today, information overload can produce feelings of:

• Anxiety
• Powerlessness
• Overburdening

It creates a situation of ‘mental fatigue’ which has an adverse impact on decision quality. Employees face difficulty making decisions — or worse, it leads to them making hasty, bad ones.

What happens then is known as “cognitive overload”. When we try to exceed our processing capacity with more data than is possible, the author writes, we literally exhaust the human brain. And multitasking, a coveted skill in today’s work market, increases the release of the stress hormone cortisol and the hormone adrenaline, which regulates our “fight or flight” response.

Lindsay Sukornyk, CEO of transformational leadership company Alive + Awake , says that information overload can lead to burnout. “It’s like working out one muscle all the time — it quickly becomes injured,” she says. “People need to be mindful of when they’re reaching that point and take a break, take a walk, connect with other humans by taking a coffee break with a coworker. It’s a good idea to get out into nature for a little while.”

She added that stressful times such as the current Covid epidemic are a challenge. “Balancing cognitive awareness with other emotional influences can be stressful.”

Infobesity: Judgement-Making at Risk

Forbes magazine Councils Member (and giant in cloud business intelligence industry) Sébastien Ricard calls this data-glut pandemic “infobesity”; in a recent Forbes contribution he commented, “…consuming too much information can cloud our ability to make good decisions. The results of these decisions can affect the entire workforce, so it’s easy to see why there’s been a rise in companies working to combat this challenge.”

Looking at the business side of the equation, that uncertainty potentially creates new forms of risks. From governance issues (should this information be shared) to customer service (is the information being given even accurate). That same Coveo study found that customer-service mistakes are costly: people will leave the brand permanently.

Think of your employees as the overburdened Jacob Marley in Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol whose chain is described as, “… was long and wound about him like a tail; and it was made (for Scrooge observed it closely) of cash-boxes, keys, padlocks, ledgers, deeds, and heavy purses wrought in steel.” Imagine how Marley felt — that is what all that excess data is like for your employees, weighing them down and compromising their physical and mental health, along with that of your business.

As the Covid pandemic recedes and the months of panic, disruption, and uncertainty dissipate, a rare opportunity arises for reflection. It’s the perfect time to re-examine, re-evaluate, and retool the company infrastructure. Find new ways of addressing their employees’ information needs without drowning them in data.

Dig Deeper

Ready to put knowledge when and where your employees need it? Dive into quick tips and best practices around modernizing your intranet, empowering your team with AI-powered search.

Check out our Guide to Delivering AI-powered Employee Experiences.