November 7, 2024
As businesses turn to automation and Artificial Intelligence to streamline workflows, boost productivity, and drive profitability, there is a hidden cost that remains largely overlooked: context switching. This invisible productivity killer affects employees across almost all industries, as they juggle multiple apps, messaging platforms, and other digital tools in the modern workplace.
And while technology has undoubtedly improved communication, data sharing, and information storage, the cognitive strain from constantly toggling between apps and tools is also leading to business inefficiencies and mental fatigue.
The result? A workforce that’s not operating at its full potential, despite the myriad of tools at its disposal.
What is Context Switching and Why Does it Matter?
Context switching refers to shifting attention from one task or application to another. In a work environment filled with constant notifications, context switching often occurs as employees move between email and messaging programs like Slack or Microsoft Teams, project management tools, CRM systems, ticketing systems and other types of specialized software.
While each switch may seem minor, the cumulative effect can be substantial. Each time a person shifts from one task to another, they need to adjust their focus and reorient themselves. This process not only takes time but also drains mental energy. For knowledge workers that are required to toggle between applications and tasks frequently, this results in significant productivity losses.
Harvard Business Review: Employees Lose 4 Hours Per Week
A study published by Harvard Business Review highlights the amount of time that employees spend switching between applications, leading to workflow inefficiency and cognitive strain.
On average, users toggled between different apps and websites nearly 1,200 times per day, resulting in almost four hours per week spent reorienting themselves. This is the equivalent to five working weeks, or 9% of an employee’s annual time at work. The constant refocusing that’s required, combined with fragmented attention, is a result of poor work design and an abundance of applications.
Workgeist Report: Employees Lose Even More Time Per Week
A 2021 Workgeist Report also examined the impact of toggling between apps on employee productivity. It found that six out of 10 people said it was difficult to keep track of information flowing through different apps.
Compared to the Harvard Business Review findings, Workgeist also uncovered that on a typical workday, people spend 59 minutes – or around five hours a week – just trying to find what is needed.
Depending on the organization, knowledge may be stored in different places. Although most employees will have access to shared drives and company-wide information appropriate to their job function, according to Workgeist, 54% of people still feel that software tools actually make it harder to find information.
In other words, finding what is required to carry out daily tasks is a task itself. In this same study, seven out of 10 people confirmed that finding the information they needed just to do their job was time-consuming and that they can spend up to 20% of their standard workday doing this.
Workplace Silos and Rogue Employees
It’s not uncommon to find different teams using different tools, which leads to those dreaded silos. A good example is where an IT department may prefer to use Slack for their messaging requirements (e.g. for managing incidents or bugs), while other departments use Microsoft Teams.
Another example is when Customer Success Managers collect valuable feedback from customers in one app, which has limited visibility for people in other departments. While it’s logical that restricting access to data can have an impact in other areas of the business, employees don’t always use the tools they are asked to use either.
According to Workgeist, 63% reported that they didn’t use recommended tools and 55% said it was time-consuming getting information from another department – especially when it came to using apps they were not familiar with.
To address part of this challenge, Conclude aims is to reduce workplace silos and reducing cognitive load by leveraging no-code apps and popular integrations with Slack and Microsoft Teams to boost interdepartmental communication.
Conclude for Helpdesk and B2B Ticketing
By bringing projects, support tickets, issues and incidents into Slack or Microsoft Teams, Conclude Apps helps teams to access information in one place, and work more efficiently. Issues, tickets and projects can also be linked with Slack and Jira Cloud to further reduce context switching.
AI integrations for email and ticket summarization in Slack can also save employees more time, and are especially useful for teams managing their IT helpdesk, or other types of support tickets.
B2B ticketing in Slack is another area where Conclude is helping businesses to tame their ticket chaos. This conversational ticketing solution integrates with Jira Cloud and Zendesk to keep tickets and conversations organized (without a messy UI).
Connecting Slack and Microsoft Teams
A common pain point for companies and another big contributor to workplace silos and context switching, is the lack of communication between two popular messaging programs – Slack and Microsoft Teams.
Conclude’s Slack and Microsoft Teams integration establishes internal and external links across both chat programs.
By connecting Slack and Microsoft Teams, Conclude enables different departments to collaborate effortlessly, reducing the need to toggle between messaging platforms. It also allows companies to connect with their clients externally using linked channels for direct chat and messaging.
Interested in learning more? Conclude is free to try for 14 days. Get started here or sign up for a demo.
This blog was originally published on June 20, 2023 and updated on November 7, 2024.
